Video clip of the day

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Something nice and mellow to ease our way into the work week...



We've been getting a kick out of the general freak-out on the liberal-Left regarding the potential sale of the L.A. Times and other Tribune Company properties to the bogeyman Koch Brothers.

Surely the protesters gathered in front of the Times offices in downtown L.A. know that the Brothers Koch want to decriminalize drugs and fully support gay marriage. Surely.

Reason.com sent a crew down there to interview these folks:

"Um, I believe that regardless of their views, it’s not what the general populace needs."

You will note that this whole concept of free speech and freedom of the press is a rather one-way street.


We are not entirely dis-interested parties in these developments. The L.A. Times was a staple in our household while growing up. In fact, we basically learned how to read by reading Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Jim Murray’s work every Tuesday and Friday in the sports section.


The local newsstand here in San Diego stopped carrying the paper a few years ago and our folks dropped their subscription about 8 years ago as they believed, correctly so, their editorial bias was leaking over to their front section straight news items (one or two anti-Bush and or anti-Iraq war pieces could be reliably counted on appearing on the front page of their big Sunday edition during this time under the guise of “News Analysis”).


The print media industry has been in free fall for years (the Times has been operating under bankruptcy now for the past 3 or so years) so we are not going to necessarily blame their woes upon perceived bias alone but c’mon Angelenos… shake things up a bit and save your damn newspaper by embracing all that shadowy money from a couple of dudes whose social politics are somewhere to the left of the President’s.


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Crime, smog, traffic, graffiti and all they have to show for it is their crappy newspaper

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One in a series that takes a look at what's going on up at the L.A. Times.


The paper of record for Southern California continues to beclown itself: first it was an endorsement of California's high-speed rail program based upon the Egyptian pyramids and now a caricature of Michelle Obama is deemed racist.


The following image appeared on the conservative blog Gateway Pundit last week:

Here's the Times "Culture Monster", Christopher Knight breaking it all down for you in case you didn't notice the obvious racism:

A baldly racist depiction of First Lady Michelle Obama that appeared Tuesday on a right-wing website is based on a 1775 portrait of Marie Antoinette by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty (1740-1786). The full-length painting hangs outside Paris in the Palace of Versailles.

The Internet image grafts Obama's face onto Gautier-Dagoty's lavish depiction of the French queen, dressed in full regalia. It also replaces the draped left arm of the young monarch, then barely 20, with a muscular black arm and shifts the position of the right hand to place it in front of a world globe.

The caricature of Obama as a profligate queen relies on the racist stereotype of an "uppity Negro," which emerged among slave masters in an earlier American era. Obama, born into a working-class Chicago family whose roots are traced to the pre-Civil War South, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, prior to holding several high-level positions in the academic and private sectors.

Thanks for the mini-bio, Chris. We suppose that was given to someway and somehow prop up your ridiculous racism charge.

Fairly or not and rightly or wrongly, the First Lady has aquired an image of an imperious and priviledged individual. It's no stretch then to caricaturize her as a modern day Marie Antoinette. That's racist? No. It's not.

So, boiling things down to its most elemental, what Knight apparently thinks is racist, then is that a black American woman is caricaturized as a.. black American woman.




Commenter to the article, Isaac Bishop Junior, makes great points regarding projection, intellectual bankruptcy and the identity politics that absolutely consume the liberal-left:

An absolutely ignorant, irresponsible, uninformed piece of yellow journalism, and an example to the rest of the leftist media. Knight, you've outdone yourself, and you stand as an example of why the newspaper is rightfully destined to die out as a media outlet. As both an American that happens to be black, and a Conservative, I find nothing racist about this image. However, I do find plenty of racism in you. Like all leftists, you hide behind skin color as a shield. You make ethnicity and sexual orientation the center of all political conversation, showing that if anyone has an obsession with it, its the left (i.e.: people like you). This hit piece you've scrawled is nothing more than another clear indicator that the liberal tank is on "E", and you've no intellectual ammunition left to fight with, so, as opposed to debating issues, you argue nonsensical BS, like this. I remember the last time this happened, in regards to the "jokerized" Obama picture. The left touted this as an example of 'right-wing hatred' and 'racism', only to have it found out that a leftist "Palestinian" did it. Where were you, then? Hiding under your desks, plotting another outrage to manufacture. It is no wonder California is the cesspool it is, today; with your writings enabling it, they'll never climb out of the sewer they've voluntarily walked themselves into.

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Smog, traffic, crime and graffiti and all that they have to show for it is their crappy newspaper

One in a series that takes a look at what's going on with the L.A. Times.



The President will not be unveiling his much-anticipated jobs plan until September but in the meantime, the Pulitzer prize-winning Los Angeles Times has weighed in on what they think will resuscitating our backsliding economy.

Here was a tease link on Times' web page last week:

Steve Lopez: Villaraigosa talks financial sense; now it's Brown's turn


Hmmm... Color us intrigued. Perhaps what Lopez was going to talk about was the mayor's willingness to put public employee benefits and pensions on the the table as a way to restore some fiscal order to the city and have that serve as the roadmap for similar action at the state level.

That hope, however, was short-lived... this is the L.A. Times we're talking about. So, what was the financial sense-talking that Lopez was referring to? Here goes:

He told me weeks ago that he was going to do it, and he did. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Tuesday in a Sacramento speech that it’s time to test the voltage in some so-called third-rail issues, including Proposition 13.

He did not, however, go as far as he might have –- precisely because it’s a third-rail issue, particularly for homeowners. So instead he took the split-roll approach, arguing that commercial property owners who got the same tax protections from the landmark 1978 proposition as private homeowners need to pony up now.

Eh. So, let's get this straight: businesses and jobs are leaving this state for the more friendly environs of states like Utah, Arizona and Texas because of the onerous tax and regulatory burdens imposed by the state and Lopez wants to increase the cost of doing business here in California? Unreal.




Alright, let's see what the other genius on the Times' Op-ed staff, Michael Hiltzik, thinks needs to happen to revive economy. He's calling for "bold" initiatives. Cool. Bold. Kind of like thinking outside the box, perhaps? Bold, as in doing something that hasn't been tried before. Like not doing the same old things that have proven to be abject failures. That sort of bold?

Nope.

1. Fix housing...

Yet as I've written before, the administration's homeowner rescue efforts have been pathetic. As part of the $700-billion banking bailout of 2008, about $50 billion was supposed to be devoted to mortgage relief, including nearly $30 billion to the mortgage modification program known as HAMP. Of that sum, only about $2 billion had been spent as of June 30, according to the bailout program's inspector general. The government made sure that bailout money got to the banks, even some that didn't want it. But homeowners have gotten barely a taste.

That remaining HAMP money is part of an unspent balance of $53 billion in the bailout program that may still be available for disbursement, according to the inspector general, depending on how it's used. Obama may not need a further congressional vote to use it. His first order of business should be to dramatically restructure HAMP, say by taking the initiative for mortgage modifications away from the banks, which have done almost nothing but gum up the process. And then put that money to use.


2. Build! The $30-billion infrastructure bank, which resembles a bipartisan idea that has been kicking around Congress for too long (the co-sponsors are Sens. John Kerry [D-Mass.] and Kay Bailey Hutchison [R-Tex.]) is a start, but only a start. If the public-private partnerships Kerry and Hutchison foresee would really create a gain of more than $600 billion over 10 years for every $10 billion spent from the public till, as they suggest, why take a cheeseparing approach?

A $100-billion fund would create $6 trillion in value, and given the sorry state of the U.S. infrastructure, that would only scratch the surface of what's needed as an investment in future economic growth. Let's see Obama put a truly ambitious program on the table, and let's hear the Republicans in Congress explain why we don't need the work.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen... Bold: More Keynesian gimmickry that has forestalled a true housing recovery by keeping bad risk mortages afloat. Bold: More Porkulus like the the $800 billion stimulus plan that was signed into law two and half years ago and which promised to keep unemployment under 8% and which, of course, did nothing of the sort except to prop up faltering state budgets and which also delayed serious discussion about what to do about those faltering budgets until only recently in states such as Wisconsin and New Jersey.

After reading those two pieces above, it begs the question regarding just what alternate universe the Times Op-ed board resides. There is simply a complete detachment from the facts-on-the-ground and a complete unwillingness to acknowledge failed policies.

Some newspaper, huh?

Crime, smog, traffic and graffiti and all they have to show for it is their crappy newspaper

One in a series that takes a look at bad journalism going down at the L.A. Times.


An L.A. Times column here by Hector Tobar recounts the on-going battle between car drivers and bicyclists over the roads of Los Angeles. It is dated July 15 and we first read it yesterday at the L.A. Times website.

However, when we went back to it this morning as we wanted to share what we thought was the money paragraph, said paragraph had appeared to be scrubbed from the article.

Here's the missing paragraph:

The new law allows cyclists to sue in civil court and collect up to three times their damages, plus attorney's fees. Ross Hirsch, a lawyer who helped craft the law, said the potential for high compensation will make attorneys more likely to take on cyclists as clients.

(italics, ours)


What do you all think? Did the L.A. Times think that Mr. Tobar was letting on a bit too much? Did they think that perhaps Mr. Tobar exposed the unseemly truth that it is indeed the foxes that are watching the hen house up there in L.A?

The L.A. Times evidently thinks it's better to keep the masses in the dark regarding the sad and sorry truth.

Not adding up

Hmmm... For a Justice Department that has been hot in the pants to try suspected terrorists in federal courts, this would represent a departure of sorts as the person allegedly responsible for the shooting death of Army Private William Long, Abdulhakim Mujad Muhammad, a self-admitted radicalized Muslim, will be tried in state court in Arkansas.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad insists he is an Islamic radical, has confessed to killing an Army soldier and wounding another at a Little Rock recruiting station two years ago, and wants to be tried on terrorism charges in federal court.

But in an unusual twist, state prosecutors, with the blessing of the federal government, are treating him like a common American criminal and trying him in state court next week on capital murder charges.

Either way, Muhammad could become the first person sentenced to death in the U.S. for an act of terrorism — even if that is not the charge — since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Muhammad, 24, born Carlos Bledsoe in Memphis, Tenn., has a profile that is now familiar in home-grown terrorism cases. He converted to Islam at age 20 at a Tennessee mosque, changed his name and traveled to the Middle East.

In 2008, he was arrested in Yemen for overstaying his visa and holding false Somali papers. His father said he became radicalized in a Yemeni jail after mixing with other prisoners there.

Six months after Muhammad returned to the U.S., he allegedly drove his black Ford Sport Trac truck to the military recruiting station. Inside the vehicle were a rifle, scope, laser sight, silencer and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He allegedly fired several rounds before fleeing.

His father is alleging a cover-up by the feds as they blew it by letting him back into this country but it is not clear from the article whether or not Muhammad was on any terror watch list.

This all remains highly curious: To our knowledge, this slaying represents the first time a uniformed serviceman has been assassinated on U.S. soil at a federal installation by a self-admitted radical Islamist. Sounds kind of terrorist-y to us, yet the feds don't want anything to do with this.

What do you all think is going on here?

Our take: Remember how the administration was tripping all over themselves in order to issue a somber statement in the immediate aftermath of the shooting death of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion doctor a couple years back? Yet shortly after that, the shooting death of Private William Long, allegedly at the hands of Muhammad, illicited a belated and lame statement from the White House that did not even appear on the White House's official website as did the Tiller statement. The White House had seen fit to handle that situation in that manner for the shooting death of an individual in the direct chain of command of the Commander-in-Chief.

Would it be fair to posit that the Feds might've taken more of an active role in the prosecution of this case if the assailant were part of say, a white-supremacist and/or extreme "anti-government" group who had specifically targeted an FBI or ATF agent? We think it's entirely fair to conjecture in this manner because the radicalization of American citizens by Islamists is not a narrative this administration wants to deal with or confront as they would be forced to do so if they took the lead in prosecuting this as a terrorism case.

What are we missing? Please re-direct if you think we are off-base.

Developing now! (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom of post for update)



Palin derangement syndrome on display...

--The state of Alaska on Friday released more than 13,000 e-mails that shed light on Sarah Palin's tenure as governor — before she became a vice-presidential candidate, a reality-TV star, and an undeclared heavyweight in the 2012 race for the White House.

Many of the e-mails dealt with the mundane matters of running an office and a state: speech preparations, gubernatorial appointments, even office softball games. Others, however, provide a look at Palin’s political persona, before she was catapulted into the national spotlight.

Check out this exchange between Andrea Mitchell and Michael Isikoff, MSNBC's senior D.C. correspondent, whom they saw fit to pack off to Juneau for this 3-ring circus.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The mere fact that we have so many reporters, news organizations who have flocked up here to Juneau to start poring over this material is a sign that Sarah Palin... remains the superstar in this (G.O.P.) field.

Mitchell looks downright bummed that this near-foreign over-land adventure might actually benefit Palin. Then again, Mitchell always looks like she's coming off a two-day bender.


Does Isikoff or anyone else up there of his ilk ever ask themselves, "What in God's name am I doing up here in Alaska on this glorified dumpster- diving gig?"


We're being crushed under a mountain of debt, we're now officially pursuing regime change in Libya, unemployment is up again and all economic indicators show us slipping back into a double-dip and this is the big news of the day.

Gripping

Dig this:

One embarrassing aspect of this episode, among several, is that major newspapers like the Times and the Post don't seem to have the resources to review a few boxes of emails to determine whether there is anything there of interest. Otherwise, why would they solicit help from hundreds of readers? In my business, litigation, it is not unusual for parties to produce tens of millions of documents. A production of 13,000 emails would be considered minuscule. That our major newspapers evidently don't have staff to do this minimal amount of work speaks volumes about their decline.

And this: LA Times Won’t Release Obama-Khalidi Tape But Posts 24,000 Sarah Palin Emails



Perhaps Isikoff has a point regarding Palin's celebrity but it's far more accurate to reason that Palin being who she is must be destroyed and must be destroyed at any cost as the breathless manner in which this is all being handled by the legacy media is proving.


We cannot see ourselves voting for Palin in the Republican primaries but count on our vote for her in the general should it come to that as for no other reason than the sight of heads exploding all across the fruited plain due to the mere possibility of Palin becoming President would bring us an unbridled joy that cannot be described in mere words.




(UPDATE #1: via the Los Angeles Times, explosive bombshell drops in the Governor Palin email hog root:

The email account of Aug. 29, 2008, the day John McCain announced Palin as his running mate, tells a tale of jubilant shock and amazement from Palin devotees.

Palin's staff fired off emails praising her speech – and got lots of love back from the new vice presidential nominee.

"Wow governor! Just watched you on TV!" wrote budget director Karen Rehfeld. "You knocked their socks off!"

"Can you believe it!" Palin replied. "He told me yesterday -- it moved fast! Pray! I love you."

Vice President Dick Cheney called the governor's office requesting a call back.

There you have it, folks. The smoking gun. Does it really get any worse than potential contact with Dick Cheney?

As time and space permit, we will be updating with more explosive Palin email revelations.

The delta smelt gets its "close up"

Awww.... The L.A. Times gives the delta smelt the puff piece worthy of the L.A. Times; blames Fox News.

The lede:

The tiny delta smelt has a big effect on the amount of water sent to 25 million people and 2 million acres of Central Valley farmland. Scientists are trying to save the creature, but politicians look to gut protections.

If by "gut", the L.A. Times means preventing California's Central Valley from turning into a dust bowl then, yes, "gut" would be the appropriate term.

Read more, here.

Free Pelosi!

The L.A. Times editorial board in their column titled, "Speaker or not, she's a keeper" , prove they don't quite grasp what the hell happened to the Democrats last Tuesday either.

Many Republicans claim that Democrats lost control of the House because of voter disgust with Pelosi's high-handed ways and the policies she rammed through Congress. That doesn't seem likely. By approving healthcare reform and imposing tighter regulations on Wall Street, Democrats delivered precisely the "change" they promised two years ago, when they were wildly popular. Meanwhile, although the government's economic stimulus strategy has helped engineer a slow turnaround for the economy, it hasn't reduced joblessness, so it's hardly surprising that the party in power took a beating. That's not a good reason to dump Pelosi. The fact that she is despised by conservatives isn't either — in fact, it's probably a tribute to her skills as speaker.

One cogent argument for Pelosi to step down posits that she did a poor job of selling Democratic policies to the electorate. Yet Pelosi, the first female speaker, has been extraordinarily effective as a legislative leader and fundraiser, shepherding through historic reforms amid solid GOP opposition. Getting such legislation passed is her job — drumming up public approval for it is not. That role properly falls to the Democrats' spokesman in chief, President Obama.

(italics, ours)

The "they did a horrible job of selling their wonderful accomplishments to a dense electorate" is a narrative that, like a bad cough, is something they just can't shake.

But you know what? Let's indulge them this fantasy and get behind the effort to maintain Pelosi as the minority leader in the House. Daily Kos has a petition that does just that, here.

H/T: The Liberator Today

Losing it

We'll just chalk this up to a case of spring-time allergies because on the heels of an L.A. Times editorial last week calling for an end to state (California) and federal out-of-control spending and a reforming of unsustainable public employee pensions, the N.Y. Times gets into tea party mode by implicitly cheerleading the austerity measures being pursued by the Greeks as they scramble to avoid a complete financial meltdown.

Among the most significant features of the plan, a Greek government official said, would be a measure making it easier for the government to lay off some of the many thousands of public sector workers, whose low levels of productivity and high wages are a big contributor to Greece’s debt problem. Until now, the government has not been able to lay off civil servants, whose employment rights are in effect constitutionally guaranteed.

Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment. Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes — where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000 — and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.

Goodness, we just don't know what's going on around here because when you lose the L.A. Times and New York Times, there might just be hope for us yet.

Welcome to the Party, boys!

Reading the Times editorial "Greece's Lessons for Us", you'd a thunk that they were regular readers of BwD. Listen to some of this stuff:

Greece's financial crisis recalls the folly of American home buyers who took out subprime loans to buy houses they couldn't afford, only to be stuck with a crushing debt when the real estate market collapsed. Thanks to a $146-billion bailout from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, Greece won't be defaulting — at least not right away. But the aid package may just be the first in a series to bring the Eurozone back to financial health. And although the details differ, the outlines of Greece's woes are troublingly familiar.

Whether or not a series of bailouts will bring the Eurozone back to health is dubious but that first part about American homebuyers taking out subprime loans they couldn't afford? Double-checking to see if this really is our beloved L.A. Times.

Greece dug itself into a deep hole over the past decade, abetted by low interest rates and willing lenders. The government provided jobs and generous pensions to about one-quarter of the workforce, sacrificing productivity for social stability. After a recession sent the country's deficit soaring, lenders started to balk at the government's demand for credit, pushing Greece toward default.

We hardly knew ye.

The U.S. budget deficit and debt aren't up to Athenian levels. But like Greece, the U.S. government has committed to providing benefits that it cannot afford over the long term. Policymakers have seen the problems in Social Security and Medicare coming for years, but Congress has done little about them. If anything, lawmakers made the task more difficult with this year's healthcare reform law, which trimmed Medicare spending but dedicated the savings to a new healthcare insurance program for the working class.

Article finishes off with a screed about unsustainable public employee union pensions and some rantings about revenue not matching out-of-control spending.

We sincerely wish there was some gracious way the Times could walk back what could rightly be construed as an unseemly association with the unwashed mob but as you have just read, the West's paper of record has let the horse out of the barn and must now suffer the charges of "un-patriotic", "un-civil" and, of course, "racist" along with the rest of us.

? will see you now

Dig the title of L.A. Times article: New Healthcare Law Is Full of Unknowns.

Because "unknown" is precisely the term you would want to use in describing the law of the land that will effect the healthcare of every man, woman and child in this country.

About the only thing Dr. Philip Schwarzman can be sure of under the national healthcare overhaul is that he is adding his daughters, ages 23 and 25, to his health plan immediately.

Much less clear to Schwarzman is how the sweeping law will affect the emergency department at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he is medical director.

"It's incredibly complicated," said the white-haired physician, whose department sees 50,000 patients a year. "It's hard to predict what's going to happen."

That pretty well sums up the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Potential effects of the law, passed last month, can be described as profound and prosaic, obvious and unknowable.

Some of its most complex and far-reaching changes won't take effect for years, including the requirement that, by 2014, all Americans have health insurance. But the law also contains immediate changes, such as the one allowing parents to add or keep dependent children up to age 26 on their health insurance policies.

"Little is certain" "Process of discovery" "Much less clear" "incredibly complicated" "hard to predict" "profound" "unknowable" "complex and far-reaching changes"

More appropriate for health care reform or a poorly organized church youth group scavenger hunt?

The article goes on to talk about something called the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare Part D drug plan whereby there is a break in coverage after enrollees spend $2,830 on meds and doesn't kick back in until annual spending hits $6,440. There will be a $250 rebate this year and a 50% discount on brand drugs for people who fall into this hole. Kind of sounds like a big deal, doesn't it? Kind of sounds like something important that would've been nice to know while this monstrosity was being put together.

We're wondering just how many people are aware of this "doughnut hole" even now. Oh boy, they'll find out soon enough, though.

Nancy Pelosi is turning out to be even more prophetic than previously thought. We will find out what all is in this bill after it's passed.

Smog, traffic, gang violence, Mayor Maiden Name and all they've got to show for it is this crappy newspaper

Out: Teapartyers are a bunch of crypto-facist racists.

In: Teapartyers are a bunch of self-absorbed, well-to-do, aging hippies.

In a shocker, the L.A. Times commissions a couple of Democratic party flaks for the latest deconstruction of the Tea Party demographic. The angry bigot meme has run its course to no real avail so now its on to two former hippies looking at the tea party movement and discovering, hey, they’re just like us 40 yrs. ago.

The tea party is a harbinger of midlife crisis, not political crisis. For men of a certain age, it offers a counterculture experience familiar from adolescence -- underground radio, esoteric tracts, consciousness-raising teach-ins and rallies replete with extroverted behavior to shock the squares -- all paid for with ample cash.

The partyers are essentially replaying the '60s protest paradigm. (We're aging boomers ourselves, so we know it when we see it.) They fancy themselves the vanguard of a revolution, when in fact they are typical self-absorbed, privileged children used to having their way -- now -- and uninhibited about complaining loudly when they don't. It's the same demographic Spiro Agnew called "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

The whole article represents a stunning bit of revisionism regarding the 60’s counterculture movement. Rather than gauzy memories of how they changed the world by making love instead of war they come to the sudden and convenient realization of what a lot of preening, attention-seeking, loudmouthed dorks they were.

To get a picture of just what a reversal of perception this is, imagine the entire cast of The Big Chill perishing in a house fire in the first reel instead of engaging in nostalgic navel-gazing as they do (now that would’ve made for an epic watch). And if quoting Spiro Agnew, for chrissakes, doesn’t prove their disengenuousness, we don’t know what does.

And frankly, as Gen X-ers, we have no idea what these two idiots are talking about especially when they start comparing the Che t-shirt to the Gadsden t-shirts favored by many in the angry mob. One loses all credibility when one tries to equate those two.

The Times beclowned itself when they simply refused to cover any of the tea party rallies initially last spring and they continue to do so playing catch-up with their lame analysis of the people who comprise the movement.

Still coverin' after all these years

Chris Dodd: bye.


WaPo article reporting on Dodd’s retirement duly notes his “faltering poll numbers” but waits until the very last paragraph to (oh, by the way) mention Dodd’s scandalous involvement with Countrywide Financial.

The L.A. Times by comparison is a yellow rag by jumping on the Countrywide gravy train half-way through their Dodd retires article.

Big Media and Climategate

Article here in L.A. Times recounts how President Obama plans to attend the Copenhagen climate conference next month in hope of securing some meaningful commitments regarding reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s how they describe the challenges the President faces:

Obama's attendance carries political risks at home, where his energy and climate bill has bogged down in the Senate behind health care. Republicans in particular are mindful of Obama's trip to Copenhagen earlier this year, when he lobbied unsuccessfully for Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Whaaa…? How it is that an article that addresses the hurdles facing the President to push through a climate change bill while not mentioning Climategate, which is certainly shaping up as the greatest scandal in the science field’s history, is unbelievable.

The New York Times reporting the same day on the same trip also fails to make any mention of Climategate. The New York Times’ enviro-blogger, Andrew Revkin, perhaps helps explain the Old Gray Lady’s refusal to engage in such inconveniences by stating that the emails were illegally obtained:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Were the Times so fair-minded and judicious when it comes to matters of national security. But perhaps we are comparing apples to oranges as the Times extends exceptions for leakage on their pages to personal emails.

Unfortunately, the Times cannot even make that rationalization as they were only to willing to post screen shots of Sarah Palin’s hacked email Inbox last September during the presidential campaign.

If the political reality (read: coal dependent states) wasn’t enough to put the lid on the coffin of cap and trade legislation then Climategate probably nailed it shut – not that you would know any of that from Big Media who simply refuse to change in the face of their continuing death spiral.

H/T: NRO's Media Blog

P.S. KT has been all over the implications of, as he calls it, ClimaQuiddick and the faith-based AGW crowd. Click and scroll, baby, click and scroll.

College football open thread: Rivalry Week Pt. II

Ironically enough, this year’s L.A. city championship probably means more precisely because there is not nearly as much at stake. Previously, during the Pete Carroll era at USC, the storyline of the matchup between the two cross-town rivals has usually been “what are the chances of a mediocre (or worse) UCLA Bruin squad upsetting USC’s BCS applecart?” (And with a lone exception 3 years ago, those chances have turned out to be nil as USC has rolled to a collective 337-155 score over the last 10 years with Carroll coaching in the last 8).

Now that a trip to exotic and far-flung bowl destinations like El Paso are in the offing for a 7-3 (#20) USC, the game on Sunday is looking to be more of a bowl game than whatever middling bowl game USC will actually go to.

Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times penned perhaps one of the most (in)famous columns in L.A. sports history back in October 2001 and one which will live in the lore of this rivalry forever. In the article, he declared L.A. a Bruin football town while UCLA was riding high in the polls, 6-0 at the time and coming off a few top-10 finishes in the previous seasons and USC was muddling through a 6-6 season in Pete Carroll’s first campaign.

We would say, “as legend has it” but there was nothing legendary or to be recalled from gauzy memory about the fact that at precisely the moment Plaschke’s column hit the streets, the fortunes of the two programs reversed and have continued to head in the same generally divergent directions since that time.

The same Bill Plaschke offers up some qualified optimism on behalf of the Bruins against the Trojans, here.

OK. On to the other games. Our fervently wished-for BCS Armageddon has been dealt a couple of serious blows thus far this weekend as Texas A&M blew a couple of different opportunities to fell #3 Texas, losing 49-39 on Thanksgiving night and Auburn was unable to hold off #2 Alabama, 26-21 yesterday in the Iron Bowl. Before the SEC and Big 12 championship games, then, we are left with the dim prospects of Florida St. upsetting (#1) Florida later today.

A bunch of other in-state rivalry games including Bedlam (Oklahoma St. at Oklahoma), Clemson at South Carolina and one of our favorites, the Holy War as the Utes of Utah (#21) go on the road to Provo to take on the BYU Cougars (#19).

And after Notre Dame's game at Stanford, you won't have Charlie Weis to kick around anymore so get your licks in now. Brian Kelly, are ready for your close-up?

There’s a lot going on that we want to get to but if we don’t check back in, please enjoy the rest of your college football Saturday.

Quote of the day

"McChrystal is one of the best killers in the world, as he proved in Iraq, but I don't think he knows squat about diplomacy," Stark says of the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. "I mean, if he didn't have a gun, he'd be useless."

That from Pete Stark (D-Mars) and who could potentially be chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee if Charles Rangel is forced to step down.

When the print media goes the way of the Dodo, this is what we will miss about them because it has been thoroughly missing: a very well-written and entertaining article that exhibits no overt political bias.

Read L.A. Times article here.

Newspaper reader comment of the day

And speaking of another cash for clunkers program, we have this courtesy the L.A. Times:

It's as if the sheriff collected all the old broken cell phones that people have in their closets and junk drawers and claimed that it was going to result in a decrease in prank phone calls.

- Taggart, on the destruction of 16,000 guns in L.A. County that will be recycled into steel rebar

Pops, who is involved with a local food bank, has told us of some hunting buddies of his who have given him the grocery store gift cards that are handed out after they decided to clear the attic of their own old and rusted-out firearms.

Afterall, these programs are really just about feeling good about yourself... and supporting area food banks.

A different slant on newspaper bailouts (UPDATED)

First, a little light reading on an accusation made by a former ACORN employee that the New York Times spiked a story on President Obama’s association with the community organizing umbrella group because it would be “game changer”, here.

Now, a little more about this business of bailing out newspapers, the current proposed bill that would prohibit newsies from endorsing candidates and whether or not they warrant it, which we posted on earlier this week.

Pops made a very good point which we’ve decided to liberate from the comment section. He said:

The concept that newspaper could not endorse a candidate as an "educational" publication is meaningless. The main endorsements are performed in the choice of articles to be run and the manner in which the articles are presented. I quit the LATimes when I found anti-Bush commentary in the cartoon page.

He’s spot-on. The ban on official endorsements is absolutely toothless as the newspaper is free to run whatever news stories they want and which can be used to effectively slant or steer the narrative in whichever direction the editor wishes.

We recall with great clarity during the run-up to the 2004 election that one could set their watch by two anti-Bush and/or anti-Iraq war stories showing up on the front page of the L.A. Times (one above the fold and one below) every. single. Sunday. (We’re not quite sure that is the proper analogy but we’re rolling with it.)

For those of you out there that want to whine that we’re just reflexive, right-wingers who want to trash Old Media because it’s the popular thing to do, get over yourselves. We still link to the major dailies in the country on the right hand margin (including the L.A. and New York Times) because it’s free, we don’t fear liberal bias and we, yep, still read them because we know we (and you) are skilled enough readers to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Exit question: For those who are opposed to a bailout of the newspapers on the rationale that newspapers would be fearful of biting the hand that feeds them, how is the current state of journalism, in effect, any different?

UPDATE #1: Fox News has obtained an answering machine message of NYT reporter Stephanie Strom explaining to ACORN whistle-blower, “Anita” that her bosses spiked the story on the Obama/ACORN relationship. Link here, to Hot Air which has the audio of the recording. Also in video clip, Dick Morris recounts how the Times, which originally broke the Clinton/Whitewater scandal, told Morris that they would kill any further investigation if they could get access to an exclusive interview with Bill Clinton for whom Morris worked for at the time. And your tax dollars will be going to preserve this “journalism”?

"What are these tea partys you speak of?"

(The first wave of nausea we experienced while posting the previous piece has passed so we'll get this one in while we can. By the way, We're pleased as punch with our decision to post these pictures that have nothing to do with the article rather than funny-looking mug shots of Nancy Pelosi... we're sure you would agree.)

San Diego U-T editorial board member, Chris Reed notes in his blog what we observed with some bemusement regarding the coverage of the tea party phenomena as the L.A. Times “covered” the Fullerton event which attracted between 8,000-15,000 people by linking to a piece from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune… from one of their keep rockin’ blogs no less. Even now, a “tea party protest” word search on the L.A. Times website will garner you the aforementioned piece at #7 and at #8 another rockin' blog piece on the internet aspect of the tea party phenomena rather than a look at the movement itself.

The New York Times seems equally clueless or willfully ignorant in its piece here regarding populist anger over the myriad of bailouts and where that anger is directed.

The Obama administration is increasingly concerned about a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street, worried that anger at financial institutions could also end up being directed at Congress and the White House and could complicate President Obama’s agenda.

Credit the Times, here – they almost get it right. Our reading of the situation is that while there is some anger reserved for Wall Street, the vast majority of this reservoir of disgust is aimed squarely at the elected officials of Sacramento and Washington D.C. Again, our internet cruising has revealed a general understanding among the majority of “party-goers” that Bailout Nation is equal parts cultural (Government rewarding bad behavior) and political (using Bailout Nation to push an agenda that has zero to do with economic recovery).

To wit (from same article):

Mr. Obama’s advisers argued that to at least some extent, this was a sentiment they could tap to push through his measures in Congress, including raising taxes on the wealthy. They pointed out that in his speech to Congress, Mr. Obama denounced corporations that “use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet.”

Peddling angst?

Yeah, we sense a real desire to “change” the status quo and “move beyond partisan politics” with a strategy like that.

As a grizzled old bard once said: It doesn’t take a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

What if you went to a "Stop the Hate - Stop Prop. 8" rally and a tea party broke out?

These two little ingrates are at the wrong protest.


A few thousand people showed up at a tea party protest held in our old stomping grounds of Fullerton, CA on Saturday. Since the L.A. Times manned-up and… linked to an piece from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune to “cover” the event, we figure the best recourse of action for the unwashed that attend these motley gatherings and wish to get some air time is to advertise as such.

Details and pictures of the event in lieu of coverage from the much-lamented decrepit paper media, here, from the as-credible-as-you-want-to-make-it, blogosphere.