LA Times to cut 250 jobs, including 150 news jobs
"Once a bear is hooked on garbage there's no cure." -- Gary Snyder
ALL ALONG OUR WATCHTOWERS where our Princes of the Media tell us our views, things are looking very shaky for their latter-day plutocracy. Their ratings tank, their circulation implodes, and revenues auger into the ground like a one-winged Gulfstream. Like the once-popular Yogi Berra Restaurant, people are staying away in droves.
Extreme measures seem to be called for and extreme solutions are tried. Some once-brilliant network exec has a new thought to save the ratings, "sex!" Katie Couric's perky points are whipped out, rubbed with ice-cubes and back lit by the blaze of Baghdad. It doesn't help. Husbands cringe and wives run screaming from the plasma-screen wall. Faced with the continuing disaster, another never-brilliant New York Times publisher has his only idea for the 600th time: "Bash Bush!" Times editors from the last time the Publisher waved his stuffed moose around convene for their 5348th Sulzberger Suckupathon and decide to "save the newspaper" by..... redesigning the web site! Ad sales and staff continue in their mutual suckage. Heroin suppository prescriptions are renewed.
Across town, employees of cable news networks whose viewer-ship has fallen to rival the circulation of "The Nation" ponder a future without houses in the Hamptons, and their forthcoming inability to land jobs as spokesmen for Ginzu Knives at the North Dakota State Fair. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Or, as we used to say in the 60s in the drug-drenched pits of Berkeley, "If you are going to have a revolution, get ready to do revolting things."
Backs to the ratings wall, they pull out their thermonuclear weapon, and video tapes
Continued...
....Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
--- Shakespeare -- Sonnet 116.
THE FIRST TIME I WAS MARRIED I was married to over 200 naked people. We weren't quite buck naked. The men had crudely made laurel wreathes on their heads, sometimes just a wad of weeds, while the women had wreathes of flowers around their brows and, for those old enough to have any, small bouquets of blossoms lodged in their pubic hair. All the men had large clubs and all the women large breasts. It was the butt end of the 60s and people in my set tended to have that kind of equipment. What children there were tended to be either infants or toddlers, all still nursing at will.
The men and the women had separated an hour or so before the wedding and, at dusk, the two groups came together from opposite directions.
Continued...Buh-bye: In 'survival mode,' newspapers slashing jobs -Washington Times
"In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition, 'An ambassador is said to be a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country ; a news-writer is a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit.'"
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention, and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read. -- Samuel Johnson, The Idler, #30, 1758
One of my odd hobbies is to read authors so ancient that they are only seldom taught and even less read in our post-post-modern world. Currently these authors are Montaigne and Dr. Johnson. A glance at the prose of these two giants is usually enough to warn today's readers to flee. Dense, extended paragraphs are composed of prolix sentences packed to the the gills with ten-dollar words. Unlike the thin consumé of contemporary fare served lukewarm and then constantly reheated in newspapers, magazines, and the books on the best-seller lists, these authors are thought to be difficult and, in absolute terms, they are. But in reading as in life, it is generally the case that the path of greater difficulty leads to the greater reward.
Continued...
Greetings Earthlings!
It has come to our attention that we haven't really been at the top of your Christmas list for some time now. Like some spouse that has become too used to having her good life paid for by a husband's work and sweat, you've decided you "need your space."
And we are here to give it to you. Politely if possible, but with both barrels if necessary. So pay attention.
We gave you a lot during the last 55 years in terms of direct aid -- whole oceans of cash and special privileges -- but we didn't complain. There was the Marshall Plan, the continuing defense of Europe during the Cold War while you just sucked down bon-bons and took long hot showers into the wee hours of the morning with every misfit Muslim, Serb or what-have-you that came your way with "a hand full of gimme and a mouth fill of not-so-much obliged."
Then there were all sorts of loans never paid back, and many billions and billions more in private charity and donations above and beyond what our government has done for you with our tax money. You were Wimpy and we were Popeye, but our metrosexual white folks liked summering in the countryside and writing hymns to your cultural theme parks so, well, what the hell?
Continued...
THE FULL MOON is sliding down the dark sky over Catalina Island off shore. Slipping in and out of sheets of haze it throws a burnished orange path out from the silhouette of the island's steep hills and across the open slate water to the shore. Below me to the north, the winding lights of the village converge on the long dark strand of the Pacific Coast Highway arcing up and over the hills of Laguna Beach and on into the towns that string out towards LA, growing ever denser along that route until it fades into the bleak streets of the metropolis.
Driving that way towards the central coast, you'd be tempted to give up the highway for a quick transit through LA and out over the Grapevine to the featureless plain of the central valley and the torpor of Highway 5. But if you stay on the Pacific Coast Highway as it disappears into scuzzy sprawl of LA, you'll find, in time, you took the better route.
Continued...
Gay fellow Americans, you are welcome to it. Next step: Gay Divorce Court on the TruTV cable channel sandwiched between Ax-Men and The Deadliest Catch.
With the start of gay nuptials in California the bad-loser moralists among us are moving faster than the speed of blather in repeating the notion that gay marriages in the chapel will let polygamy come out of the closet in a rocket. As that serial monogamist Scarlet O'Hara would say, "Well, fiddle-dee-di."
I'm with Dorothy Sayers on this one:
As I grow older and older
And totter toward the tomb
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom
We've got a lot of problems with marriage in this country, but can't we take a step back and draw a deep breath, smell the winds of change and admit that Gay Marriage is a done deal? It's here. It's queer. So what?
Enough with all the whining and carping and running about with one's hair on fire screaming, "Oh! Gay Marriage. I got the fear!" If a couple of normally insane Americans want to get a bunch of friends or Elvis impersonators together, seek out a whompingly liberal priest, rabbi, minister, or Marryin' Sam to hitch them up... again, so what?
Speaking as a twice married, twice disappointed, compulsively heterosexual male, I have heard the arguments and seen the yearning and felt the love of gay and lesbian couples from sea to shining sea. And I have felt their pain and now wish only that they share my pain. It will bring us together.
A short list. In no particular order.
We had car shows, boat shows, beauty shows and dog shows.
We ran robots on the surface of Mars by remote control.
Our women came from all over the world in all shapes and sizes hues and scents.
We actually believed that all men are created equal and tried to make it come true.
Everybody liked our movies and loved our television shows.
When you walk along this beach
You take all that you can carry --
Dog, shoes, shadow -- even,
If you are not very selective,
"The Ride of the Valkyries."
And you think that because
You walk this beach
So easy and so free
That you will always
Stroll upon this sand.
Look up. A large black dog
Shambles and sniffs
Along this wet, black strand.
Eight dark ravens
Settle at the surf line,
And the drunken crone
Paws in the sand for a sign
Where there are no signs.
You're weary of all you carry,
So you leave it behind
In a pile upon the beach,
Heaped with the crone,
The ravens and the dog,
Hoping it will fade
Forever out of reach,
Becoming just one more
Bonfire on the beach.
I know exactly what I was doing.... The question is, do you know what you were doing? -- Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
LAST WEEK I ATTENDED AN ADVANCE SCREENING of Peaceful Warrior , a new film scheduled to open on June 2 in the limited release common to films that fail to blow things up, chop off heads, or give you a close-up of a famous actor's body-double's butt.
I imagine that the critics will have their way with this film. It has the all obvious weaknesses of low budget films "with a message." It sends those messages too frequently and, at times, through the weaker vessels of the cast. Still, for all its shortcomings, Peaceful Warrior is a film worth seeing not for whole but for the parts. Peaceful Warrior delivers a very rare set of moments in today's cinema: moments of grace and, more importantly, moments of real luminosity; moments when the actual wisdom and light of being here and now in this real life are shown to you. In short, it gives you real moments of grace.
I saw this film last Tuesday and my initial reaction, because I guard myself too carefully, was to
Continued...
Truth: "uncool."
Nineteen-year-old Army Pfc. Aaron J. Ward, a Fort Lewis military policeman whose hometown was San Jacinto, Calif., was killed May 6 in Iraq's Anbar province when his patrol came under enemy fire. - Ranger, sub officer, MP with links to state died in war last month EDITOR'S NOTE: Each month, the P-I remembers the servicemen and servicewomen with ties to Washington who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The American culture of cool has become a nation apart, an alternate-America..."
It was Easter Sunday in 2004 and we were two and a half years into the war. Good Friday evening was one of those nights when, in Southern California, the weather and the combine to create what are rightly called "balmy conditions." Balm, as in a kind of salve to the soul and the skin. The air is warm but not too warm. The skies are clear and the stars seem closer. My then wife and I had just seen some current comic book confection at one of the 20 screen multiplexes that are so numerous in this area that you can see the same movies 15 times within a ten mile radius.
We sat by a large sandstone and marble fountain in the stone circle between the vast theater and the vaster parking lot. It was date night and the beginning of Spring Break for the schools of Orange County. All around us kids from 11 to 18 were whooping and laughing and forming clusters of friends. They were dressed according to the upscale Goth-Surfer/Balkan Refugee dress-code common to the kid culture here on the coast. Most were too young to have tattoos or piercing, but you could see some were already planning where those lifestyle statements would go. They were slim, energetic and heedless of the future. In short, they were just reasonably rich kids in America in 2003. No different now in 2008, seven and a half years into a war they've been trained to hate or ignore.
The war was not and will probably never become these kids' concern. It isn't even something they consider outside of, perhaps, a few classroom exercises of dubious intent or merit. There is no reason they should consider war, nor do I wish that upon them. It isn't, in any real sense, their war. War isn't being asked of us or the affluent kids of Orange County, nor does it seem likely to be. Besides, war isn't what they're into.
Marin Forest, June 2008
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
If we betray the people who love us, what's to stop us from betraying the country that makes us possible?
Have you ever betrayed your promise?
Did you ever break a vow?
Have you traded love for money,
And are you happy now?
Did you kiss him in the garden,
And then abandon him to fate?
Is your final sin forgiven,
Or is it far too late?
WHEN IT COMES TO DISCOVERING new ways to cheapen the human soul, the "professional intellectuals" of our society have cornered the market. So it was last week when, timed carefully to cash in on the Easter holiday, the "serious" editors of National Geographic chose to release their gleanings from a sheaf of rags and call them "The Gospel of Judas."
Having risen through the echo chamber of "higher" education and survived the ruthless but quiet vetting process of their "profession," these editors knew full well that what they were putting out into the world was not a "gospel." They also knew that calling it a "gospel" would ensure greater attention and greater sales. Beyond that, the editors, secular cultists all, also got a quiet little tingle by having, in their minds, "stuck it" to the Christian church once again. As usual, such secularists love to stick it to Christianity. Addicts of auto-erotic spiritual asphyxiation, their onanistic pleasure in these deeds is only enhanced if they can be performed during the most holy days of the Christian calendar. Only then can maximum profit and pleasure be assured.
The Spark Gap
I've long had a theory about why prayers are answered, but answered rarely. I think that God, for all his omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience is pretty much nailed to the present as far as humans go.
Yes, I know all the arguments for predestination and preordination but those strike me as a one-way street to Dullsville even for God. If, as God, You let Yourself know everything that was going to happen everywhere for all time (Not that You couldn't if You wanted to.), what's the entertainment value in that proposition? Slim to none, if you ask me.
We don't know much about God. Indeed, there are many among us who make it a point to know even less -- until they are proud, damned proud, to know nothing at all. Once they achieve this brainfade, they encourage the rest of us to follow suit in a paroxysm of self-willed ignorance. Today there are fresh new scriptures attesting to this revelation. There are traveling preachers of this gospel. There are even congregations, support groups, jewelry, and t-shirts. It's a religion. Of sorts. A religion in which you collectively as individuals agree to worship Zero, and to carry the gospel to others. Seems like a waste of life to me.
In fact, we are probably not yet wired to know much about God. If the Smart Monkey survives itself, evolution (Great and brilliant tool of God that it is.) will probably finish the deeper neural nets of our brains at some point in the aeons to come, and we will slowly come to descry the faintest shadow of a clue. About all that is. About the fundamental nature of the miracle. For the present, most of us remain in shadow, looking at the noema from without; running on the insights of the genetic spiritual sports that appear on Earth so rarely that their lives are remembered forever.
At the present time, most of what we know about God comes from assumptions built on revelations. These are backed-up with a sheaf of incomplete, poorly translated notes from chance encounters.
The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that, to date, our record keeping is spotty and our storage methods poor. If you think that any future chance meetings or memos are going, in the long run, to be kept any better than the Dead Sea Scrolls, please tell me what's on that six-inch floppy disc at the bottom of the fourth box to the left on the third shelf from the top at the back of my garage.
Nope. The problem is not knowing the will and laws of God. They are pretty simple, straight forward, and seem, for the most part, to be embedded in the cerebral cortex of most before birth. In addition, there are lots of memos in every language and no shortage of interpreters -- AM/FM/SW; network and cable; 24/7/365, forever and ever, amen, can I get a witness? Even so there have to be thousands of memos that, although sent, we just didn't get. Indeed, even working with the memos that we did get, you'd have to admit that we are very poor at carrying out the policies they announce. It probably has to do with us not being finished just yet.
Continued...
Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety years,
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.
-- Edgar Lee Masters, :The Hill", Spoon River Anthology
Abraham Lincoln, before rising to the Presidency, spoke on the dangers confronting the Republic 150 years ago: "A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND" Springfield, Missouri, June 16, 1858. **
ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
"IF we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the seventh year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to Islamic terrorism. Under the operation of that policy, that Terrorism not only has not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, Islamic Terrorism will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.
"A house divided against itself can not stand."
I believe this government can not endure permanently half faint-hearted and half resolved. I do not expect America to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
- August 2008
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"Africa should make more use of the skills of its nomadic peoples to help combat the challenges of climate change, the aid agency Oxfam says." -- BBC NEWS | Africa | Maasai 'can fight climate change'
In 2003 I left earth aboard the Mars Rover, Spirit. Seven months later I arrived on Mars. Prior to departing earth, I deposited the amount of US$ 11,600,000 (Eleven million, six hundred thousand United States dollars) in four safety galvanized boxes in a European financial institution which will be disclosed to you upon your acceptance of my proposal.... Last year, during the course of my research on Mars, I was ambushed by a group of analdwelling rebel Martians who inflicted great torturous pain upon my body with anal probes." -- Blame it on the voices
Guess the missing choice ... perhaps somewhere under "Other." Vote at the link.
"The Democrats wanted a cigar-chomping populist who could portray the Republicans as elitists who stomped on the Joe little-guy. Once again they got a flashier version of a John Edwards-John Kerry-Al Gore preachy liberal, who whines about the price of arugula and thinks stepping off a jet in shades and polo shirts is an Esquire photo-op." -- Victor Hanson, Victory Laps for the Hare, as the Tortoise Crawls On
Russian General Vyachislav Borisov in Gori, Georgia: "We summoned the Israeli Foreign Minister to Moscow. And he was told that if he continues to supply arms to the Georgians we would continue to supply Hezbollah and Hamas." -Bernard-Henri Levyy: Georgia at War: What I Saw
Denver's homeless get free haircuts to look good for Obama and his Democrats"This way to the showers, ladies and gentlemen...."
"You have to wonder about the collective intelligence of the journalistic classes don't you? You can tell them till you're blue in the face that small farms are more inefficient than big ones; that this means that they use more resources than small ones, and that this is bad for the environment; and that all of this goes doubly for organic farms. And no matter how hard you try to ram this simple fact into their dull heads, they just don't get it. - Bishop Hill
"Capitalism is evil and America is a horrible fascist place, the argument goes, except for my lucrative studio contract, except for my fat bank account, except for my mansion, my swimming pool, my ranch, and my luxury cars." -On Trumbo
"The students of Chicago streets are now the old men of the Democrat Party. They blame America, somehow, for Russian tanks in Georgia, just as they blamed America, if they blamed anyone, for Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia. Frozen in time, immune to reality, they tear and claw at the nation which gave them everything. They lived as they lived in 1968 -- reveling in the bloodying of America, chanting praises of Marxist monsters, pummeling anyone within their party who did not toe the party line." -American Thinker: Forty Years after the Death of a Party
DO NOT PISS OFF THE CAT PEOPLE.Rachel Lucas Most volatile flame war ignitor ever:Cats are assholes.
Rachel Maddow to Replace Dan Abrams on MSNBC Mr. Griffin said of the selection of Ms. Maddow, "This just completes our prime-time lineup. Our lineup makes sense now."It does if draining money into your communal drool cup makes sense.
"At some point, though, we need to hear where candidates stand on policy. This is where Obama struggles. Politics is about divisions." - RealClearPolitics An Election Just Like Any Other
Making kids morbidly obese one plate at a time:
The Most Disgusting School Lunches
"At the very heart of a philosophy of deterministic, self-engendered moral standards stands the individual. The rejection of moral absolutes is nothing more than radical individualism broadcast across society -- the notion that we are the sole arbiters of our behavior and morality, that we alone determine what is right and what is wrong. As a corollary, there is another assumption underlying this one: that others should bear the consequences, especially adverse consequences of our actions. Those who reject moral absolutes gravitate to a nihilistic narcissism, where there are rights but no responsibilities, demanding freedom to act as they please without thought for anyone else, all the while demanding that others rescue them from wreckage their behavior has wrought."
Chew your way to a bigger, firmer, fuller chest with Zoft Breast Enhancement Gum
""Hello, my name is Erika and I live in Magnolia, Texas. I'm originally born in Hamburg, Germany so that's why I'm talking a little funny. I'm 42 years old and I had usually the problem to fill out my cup A bra. I'm chewing the gum for 5 weeks now and I want to encourage all woman who want firmer and fuller breasts to give it a try. My breasts started to feel firmer after 3 weeks and about now I feel like they starting to get fuller."
Mr Caballero's clothes can withstand shots from 9mm pistols to AK-47s and clients fearing knives can pay extra for stab-proofing." - BBC NEWS | Africa | Bullet-proof fashion for S Africa
"Yes, the United States is a great country, not in some liberal politician’s Utopian vision, but as you see it right now, in the moment in which you’re reading this sentence; and yes, it is very cool to think so." - House of Eratosthenes
Olympic Synchronized Diving Summarized:
Theirs is a sport not without beauty, but it always seems to have a homoerotic whiff about it as well. It all looks like a wonderfully elegant gay suicide pact. - The joy of Michael Phelps' epic demented journey - Times Online
"What went wrong is that someone forgot to tell Osama Bin Laden that religion had been abolished; and someone similarly forgot to tell the Russians, South Ossetians and Georgians that there are no more countries. If 9/11 was a visit from the 8th century, Russia's incursion into the near abroad was blast for the 19th century past. " - Belmont Club ｻ The last nation
"Can anyone imagine Clinton or Obama doing anything... alone? Government is, to them, a toy, an object of amusement, a super-sized television set." - American Thinker: How the East Was Lost
"Light rail will not be the death of America. But the attitude behind light rail â that we can and should spend billions on every feel-good project that comes along without evaluating its cost effectiveness -- may very well be the death of the democracy and freedom we cherish. - The Future of Democracy » The Antiplanner
Barack Obama says tire inflation would replace all the new oil to be found offshore. How does he know, when he sponsors a bill forbidding us from even finding out how much is there?
5 billion years at double current world electricity usage. - from Next Big Future
still in print from Amazon and available online in full text since 1995, is now available as a FREE download PDF with a twist. "In many ways, this version is better than the book. It is searchable, it has color illustrations, it has better navigation, it is free, and it has surprising contextual ads, which I find interesting."
"Once again, the Europeans, and their friends in the pusillanimous wing of the US Left, have demonstrated that, when it come to those postmodern Olympian sports of synchronized self-loathing, team hand-wringing and lightweight posturing, they know how to sweep gold, silver and bronze. - Georgia: Europe wins a gold medal for defeatism | Gerard Baker - Times Online
"It's a solitary thing, to write. I hole myself up in a place that's illegal to put a murderer in --too small. But you have to get away from the wrong kind of noise. Cicadas are OK. The wheezing of the refrigerator cycling on and off is not. A lawnmower four blocks away is delightful. Next door makes you dream of slitting throats." - Sippican Cottage: Holding It Back
The Goods:Buy evidence of my husband's adultery on eBay
"They are so huge I thought they may make someone a nice shawl or, even better, something for Halloween perhaps." The eBay listing, entitled "Empty condom packet & a photo of 'The Tart's' knickers," also includes a detailed account of the events leading up to the discovery."
"I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second. Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost," [ExxonMobil CEO and chairman Rex Tillerson] told ABC News' Charles Gibson. "We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it." -ABC News: Oil Exec: Energy Independence Unrealistic
"I've also directed Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to begin a humanitarian mission to the people of Georgia, headed by the United States military. This mission will be vigorous and ongoing. A U.S. C-17 aircraft with humanitarian supplies is on its way. And in the days ahead we will use U.S. aircraft, as well as naval forces, to deliver humanitarian and medical supplies.
We expect Russia to honor its commitment to let in all forms of humanitarian assistance. We expect Russia to ensure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads, and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit. We expect Russia to meet its commitment to cease all military activities in Georgia. And we expect all Russian forces that entered Georgia in recent days to withdraw from that country. " - President Bush Discusses Situation in Georgia, Urges Russia to Cease Military Operations
"Russia will have its way, whatever its way actually is, and the US and the West will do exactly nothing. The US will not go to war to turn Russia back (nor would the US be able to do so even if it wanted), and Europe can't go to war without the US. Absent a credible threat of force, the protestations of diplomats mean precisely zilch because there are no sanctions that are remotely possible that Vladimir Putin et. al. will think more painful than the benefits of enforcing their will against Georgia. The balance of power just tipped, folks, and there is not one darn thing we can do about it." -Donald Sensing - Sense of Events: Russia's the hare, the UN's the tortoise
Our position is that crack troops should be allowed to wear what they like as long as they leave the President alone.
Russia is being victimized by the nasty evil Western imperialists in the shape of Georgia becoming pro-Western, more or less democratic and, possibly, economically far more successful than Russia itself. Therefore, Russia has every right to assert her influence in the region and protect her interests. The West, on the other hand, has no right whatsoever to support its ally or to ensure that Russia does not control the entire flow of oil from the Caspian region. - EU Referendum: No news is not good news
Four Mexican army soldiers entered southern Arizona and pointed their rifles at a U.S. Border Patrol agent early this week, the Border Patrol said. The incident Sunday was the Mexican military's 43rd incursion across the U.S. border since October, the agency said. However, it was unusual because firearms were involved.
SO NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT THE PRESS COVERED FOR EDWARDS -- just as, pre-invasion, they covered for Saddam -- that raises a question: What else are they not telling us for fear it will hurt the Democrats' prospects?
LICK found that the average American travels twenty-nine miles each day in their car at an average speed of thirty-one miles per hour, spending a total of fifty-five minutes on the road. If not for speeding, the amount of time spent daily behind the wheel could likely be fifty-seven or even fifty-eight minutes.
You remember Bush, right? The guy who goes to Asia and tells China to free her people, while the press jeers, the guy who, while in Asia also meets with Democracy Activists in Burma and gets ignored for it, the guy who drew enormous and supportive crowds in Korea, while the American press yawned?
Sure, you remember Bush! He’s the guy whose life was threatened along with Barack Obama’s but only the threat to Obama was newsworthy for a very long time at CNN. Bush? You mean the creepy moron who will be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as soon as congress can figure out how to do that without exposing itself or having to put some of its own members under oath?
Yeah, that guy! The guy who does more than just talk about freedom and progress. The guy who has brought real hope and change to people all over the world, and yes, here in America. But you don’t want to hear it. It’s the wrong and inconvenient narrative, the embargoed one. -- Linking around @ The Anchoress
"Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough." -- John Edwards' statement Politico.comOne shoe dropped. One Imelda Marcos closetful yet to come...
Washington State: "Now agents are using extreme tactics to clean out the pot-squatters. Agents recently loaded up with ammo and camo to raid a major marijuana grow operation in Grant County wilderness. Assault teams, hoping to capture the growers, arrived dangling from helicopters. The plan was to be hanging so far down they could easily unclip and run in, using the element of surprise. It's become the preferred tactic. Agents arrive fresh, and with a perimeter of agents on the ground, the growers have nowhere to run. Hiding won't work either. Canine agents also fly in. The dogs are trained to be comfortable in harnesses." -- Agents use extreme tactics to evict pot-squatters KING5.comOkay, this is just getting to be far, far too silly.
Off with a Bang
is ... a fantasy mindset about the power of technology to solve problems. A Gore follower, to be sincere, must put absolute faith in the ability to conjure a technological solution to any "problem," however stated and however constrained. Power the largest, most advanced, and most complex industrial economy in the world without the use of the world's most copiously available fuel? And without incurring an undesired side effect that's even worse than the ones from using petroleum? No problem! American engineers can do anything...given enough motivation, anyway. To be gentle about it, this is not the case." -Francis W. Porretto - Eternity Road
Apple Pie in the face on the news stand. Smells like tween spirit:
Ladies' Home Journal's Sept. issue sports an interview with Michelle and Barack Obama with the picture of both sharing the cover of the magazine. Single copy buyers get an extra inset picture, with not so subliminal message, of an apple pie that readers can "rub and sniff" and the smell of the apple pie sends a wow through the senses of the customers. What can be more American than an apple pie? Well, you do not have to be a genius to add one plus one and the entire cover package is smelling like an apple pie. The subscribers of Ladies' Home Journal have to be satisfied with the smell of ink on paper (and as much as I love the smell of ink on paper, I can't write that the smell of ink on paper is as American as an apple pie!)
In my previous blog, I have asked the question about the coverage both Obama and McCain are receiving from the American magazines, well you can add this one to the Obama camp and you can keep on counting... My guesstimate is the score is at least 4 to 1 in favor of Obama. Have a different theory, please do not hesitate to comment.
"I've been preparing for this moment during my silence of the last six months," notes Carter. "There should be no Constitutional issue since I am no longer the man I once was.""
"Obama is the comet that swings around our solar system every sixteen years without fail. Youngest out of everyone running, in fact, out of all who have been running; destined to win; talks about change a lot, with no details, or very few. Obama, Clinton, Carter, JFK." - House of Eratosthenes
"The next time I come across an Iraqi War veteran, I'll not only thank him or her for their sacrifice in defending my freedom, I'll also offer congratulations for winning a war." News & Observer - Raleigh, NC -- You heard it here first: We won the warWell, first if you mean reading it in an actual tree-based newspaper. Mas vale tarde que nunca.
"With grim crocodile tears, grim the MSM grimly reported that the grim United states grimly passed the grim milestone of grimness in the grim war in grim [Afghanistan] as grim American grim casualties of grimiosity grimly reached the grim number of [500].
"When grimly asked why the grim MSM grimly gives grim front (grim) page grim-prominence to such an out-of-grim-context number while grimily ignoring non-grim grim-type other grim news about grim-positive grim developments since the grim surge grimly started working with grimness or, indeed, why the grim MSM never reports on grim grim milestones of any other grim conflicts or grim armed grim forces (especially those of the grim enemy), the grim MSM just looked grim." - Ephemeral Isle: Grim Reporting
"I'm not home a lot, so Michelle is usually willing to give it up." - Barack Obama in Entertainment Weekly
- Media's "Cracked Bells and Washed-Out Horns"
- The Wedding Vows
- Newspaper Death: Dr. Johnson and Today's Liars for Hire
- The Declaration of Non-Dependency
- Laguna Dawn
- Gay Marriage: Just Do It!
- How Beautiful We Were
- Oceanside
- My Father
- "There's Never Nothing Happening"
- "Ain't It Cool?"
- Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
- Judas: A Saint for Our Seasons
- "While You Were Out"
- A House Divided A Century and a Half Later: What Lincoln Would Say Were He Speaking Today