How dumb are they?

The Los Angeles Times flaunts their gullibility with a fake press release on the front page.

OUCH

Editorial from the New York Post:

Does The New York Times consider it self a law unto itself — free to subversively undercut basic efforts by any government to protect and defend its citizens?

"The New York Times -- a once-great and still-powerful institution -- is badly in need of adult supervision."

We've said that for a long time

Government Art

The problem with government-sponsored art.

The set of posters in PDF.

Munich Advisor

Do you get the feeling that this story is another Spielberg consultant hired, as was the political advisor to Arial Sharon, to make "Munich" more palatable to audiences?

Near end of article: Kathleen Kennedy, Spielber's producer, admitted that an unnamed Palestinian consultant was used for "Munich". How come Nazis were not consulted for "Schindler's List"? That, folks, is why critics understand Spielberg's latest film is about moral equivalence.

Kyoto hypocrisy

From the State Department? Washington Times? The White House?

Although the US is portrayed as the ecological villain for refusing to sign up to the agreement, 10 out of the 15 European Union signatories - including Ireland, Italy and Spain - will miss their targets without urgent action, the Institute for Public Policy Research found.

France, Greece and Germany are given "amber warnings" and will only achieve the objectives if planned policies are successfully carried out.

None of the above. This surprising story was reported in the Independent. Here Wait! Wait, you say. Isn't that the Leftwing newspaper from the U.K.? Yes.

And those are only the European countries. You ask, how about Canada? Well, it isn't in this story, but Canada has not reduced emisions either. In fact, Canada's emissions have increased 30% since 1997. Like 13 out of 15 European countries, emissions are increasing every year in the Land of Sanctimony and Ze Boondoggle.

"Shifting Sands" Part II

Scott Johnson at PowerLine has "more on 'Munich" wth a devastating review by Mitch Webber. Webber:

The most misleading line in Stephen Spielberg's Munich comes near the beginning. Israel's prime minister, Golda Meir, tells her cabinet, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values." The implication is that Meir was reluctant to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the Munich massacre, and that doing so was contrary to Israeli, and civilized, values.

The truth is just the opposite. Meir understood that Israel's chief obligation is to ensure that Jews will never again be slaughtered with impunity, simply for being Jewish. Holding mass murderers accountable is not a compromise; it is Israel's reason for being.

The most misleading omission from Munich is Germany's response to the massacre. Germany released the Black September terrorists less than two months after they had killed eleven innocent civilians. Israel had to hunt down Black September, because Germany didn't value Jewish lives enough to capture, try, and imprison those who kill Israelis on German soil. (Also missing from the film is any mention of Germany's refused to allow the Israeli Olympians their own security detail, despite credible threats to their safety, and Germany's refusal to let Israel conduct a rescue operation.) Meir said that she was "literally physically sickened" by Germany's capitulation. She continued, "I think that there is not one single terrorist held in prison anywhere in the world. Everyone else gives in."

It is a great review, well worth reading and Scott's comments are very relevant. What is missing, however, is to note that Spielberg may have had another motivation and that is to condemn the U.S. reaction toward terrorism as another compromise with cvilized Western values. If Spielberg had no message, he was either incredibly naive to rely on the screenwriter or, more likely, I suspect, he was bought and paid for by people who wanted to promote that view, condemning both Israel and the U.S.   Think of it as a Scott Ritter film with a multi-million dollar budget.

NO NO! DON'T CUT -- NOT NEWSPAPER JOBS!

Allegedly, according to the New York Times, there are public demonstrations against job cuts by the Tribune Company, owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel, etc.

The company has cut its work force by 4 percent, or 900 jobs, accounting for nearly half the estimated 2,000 jobs lost in the entire industry this year.

Later in the article... way down:   MoveOn attended an investor conference and handed over petitions with 45,000 signatures. Uh huh

A more discerning person might suspect possible linkage that the New York Times doesn't even consider.

CAN YOU SPELL CORRUPTION?

Of the $1.1 billion in U.N. disaster funds from a world wide appeal, some $590 million was spent on staff, administration, and "related costs." This, according to an investigation conducted by the Financial Times. It might be even worse as the FT found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to release details of their spending.

FLASHBACK The U.N. was quick to promise a full audit to ensure countries pay the money they pledged to tsunami relief. (Jan. 6, 2005)

The Financial Times story is behind a subscription wall, something they should reconsider. A FT Synication Service story in The Financial Express, however, has a few details.

If the 2005 tsunami is the major story of 2005, why don't the media spend some time writing the conclusion?

A "HOMOPHOBIC INCIDENT"

A "homophobic incident" investigated by police. How come the New York Times is in full snit about wiretaps of conversations with known terrorists but thinks incidents like this and tracking the road use of every car in the U.K. is ho hum?

That was, of course, rhetorical. We all know why the New York Times does not find such intrusions alarming. To the New York Times, Yassir Arafat was a "romantic revolutionary" and Fidel Castro is a newsroom folk hero. Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize is still memorialized on the NYT walls and they, like CNN's defense of non-coverage of the brutality in Iraq, defend Duranty's dispatches, crediting the laspse to this day to the brutality of the regime they were supposedly covering. Duranty was a tool, a propaganda piece employed by the Soviet Union to conceal murderous purges that, even today, the New York Times cannot call genocide.

Duranty symbolizes everything that is wrong with the New York Times. And the Pulitzer prizes.

FLASHBACK

Tell me again why Bill Clinton urged Sri Lanka to share tsunami aid with the Tamil Tigers in the north. Predictable

Flashback

UH UH NO WAY

Remind ourselves when Ford asks for a bailout.

HILARIOUS

It is not the first time that Ted Kennedy has looked like a fool. However, in a "Student's Tall Tall Revealed" from the Boston Globe you have to read to the bottom of the article to find Uncle Teddy's hilarious gaffe.

Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said last night that the senator cited ''public reports' in his opinion piece. Even if the assertion was a hoax, she said, it did not detract from Kennedy's broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance."

Worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit. Tall Tail

BAH HUMBUG and SHAME ON THEM

And you wonder why movie attendance is down. Here

TV ratings

This can't be a good Christmas for Fox News competition. Scoreboard: Thursday Dec. 22

25-54 demographic
7pm: Shep: 337,000 / Situation: 155,000 / Hardball: 52,000 / Showbiz: 86,000 / On the Money: 23,000

Total viewers
7pm: Shep: 1,390,000 / Situation: 511,000 / Hardball: 428,000 / Showbiz: 233,000 / On the Money: 61,000

Either the viewers of Hardball are below age 25, something I very much doubt or they would overhype it, or the Hardball audience is geriatric.

Source: Mediabistro

SPIELBERG'S MUNICH

"The History Behind Munich: Separating truth from fiction in Spielberg's movie" is the title of this Slate article. And Aaron Klein is just the man to do it. (Scroll down for his credentials.)

Short version: pure fantasy based on a questional book. Translation: ET is still phoning home and Steven is always available.

More Canadian election nonsense. This time, B.C.'s Lieutenant Governor wants an apology from the U.S. government for the lynching of an aboriginal boy by an American mob more than 120 years ago.

As one wag at Lucianne.com says "I wasn't there. And I can prove it."

It is, of course, the silly season. Unfortunately, it has become a year-round event with Canadian as well as American Liberal politicians. One can only note that the failure of Liberalism is the ascent of the hard left and the nutcases. Increasingly it is difficult to differentiate.

DIVORCE, CABLE STYLE

It's all their fault.   Microsoft, that is.   It's their fault that The Preciouss MSNBC has "lagged behind Fox News Channel and CNN in the ratings race for years."   At least that is what the New York Times implies in this absurd article about the breakup of Microsoft and NBC in cable channel MSNBC.

Allegedly, (<-- journalistic device to denote scepticism) NBC executives complained they did not have enough control of the budget to market their programs and hire the right talent.   YEAH RIGHT <-- conversational device to denote scepticism)   Now that NBC is "squarely in control" we can expect great things I imagine.

Microsoft has been negotiating to leave the partnership for several years, not just this last year.   It has been downright disastrous for Microsoft with "hundreds of millions [of dollars] in losses".   Had the Times written the story honestly, they might have noted that, and the fact that the only profitable side of the venture has been MSNBC.com, the online news site.   Only Variety mentions that.     (But The Preciouss must be protected!)

Microsoft will continue the 50-50 partnership in MSNBC.com

HO HO HO

Here's something to cheer about. The New York Times stock prices in 2005.


Hat tip to American Digest.

Hugh Hewitt interview

Hugh Hewitt had a great interview today with University of Chicago Professor Cass Sunstein on the allegedly illegal wiretaps by our intelligence agencies that turn out probably aren't illegal at all. What appears almost certainly illegal is the the leak of classified information on the program, the release of which was probably, and almost certainly, very harmful to our national interest.

Great interview. I am hoping they post a sound file for it.

DESPICABLE

Stem cell research fraud
"This kind of error is a grave act that damages the foundation of science," the panel said.

That's how a panel at the Seoul National University described the deliberate fakery by Hwang Woo-suk, unable to bring themselves to call it what it was.

Body snatching in Brooklyn
Some of Alistair Cooke's bones were stolen by morticians in Brookly and sold for $7,000 to two tissue processing companies for transplant, despite the fact that he had died of cancer that had spread to his bones. His was only one of what may be 1000 bodies that were desecrated. The Guardian has more details than you want to know about the investigation. The New York Daily News broke the story and continue to follow the scandal. More

BRIEF

Chinese spill poisons water for millions
How come professional environmentalists don't scream about this?
The story doesn't even quote a single activist.

Outrage - - that wasn't
Human rights activists are curiously silent, too, when Belgium passes a law to allow police to bug suspects, tail them, and search their premises without - gasp - a warrant. And where is the outrage for this?

On the bright side
Things are getting serious at the Knight-Ridder offices. The union is talking about buying the paper chain. One less ultra-liberal newspaper chain.

Just wondering
What is with all the major newspapers racing to shield their journalists from critical eyes? Is it to protect fragile egos or maintain a fiction that the sods can actually think or write?

SPINNING

A story a few days ago about the aging and declining population in Canada must have raised a few concerns. Quick to assure readers, the Globe and Mail can happily report that Toronto has avoided that "hollowing out" that plagues North American cities for a number of reasons. Condos and population density changes aside, the real reason is that they are importing vast numbers of immigrants. You just have to look at the official Canadian census figures and the percentages. And then consider the implications of this demographic.

This isn't a problem unique to Canada. Virtually every Old European country has the same time bomb they are ignoring. California has a similar problem with a percentage of immigrants who do not wish to assimilate and a political power that doesn't have any reason for them to do so. There may be one small difference though. In the U.S. the more enterprising immigrant who does want to assimilate and become upwardly mobile can move to another state to find opportunities and escape the liberal plantation. That outward internal migration isn't happening in Canada.

Statistics Canada. Link

IN A HAND BASKET

If we ever have a position of Culture Minister in our government you will know we have gone straight to hell.

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here (The first Culture Minister for Tourism, Culture, and Sport was de-throned for taking his vacations abroad and generally behaving like an absolute and utter idiot.)
Here
Here
Here

VOTING WITH OUR FEET

While Canada is starting to worry about their rapidly aging population, the liberals in the U.S. have whole other worries. The population is shifting from the northeast (read: ultra liberal) states to the west and south. This has political consequences.

Clark Bensen of Polidata, a Virginia firm that crunches political data, said population shifts over the past 65 years have dramatically changed the regional makeup of Congress.

In 1940, Northeastern and Midwestern states had a total of 251 seats in the House, compared with 184 for states in the South and West. Today, Southern and Western states have the edge, 252-183.

"Basically, it took two generations to have a complete shifting of the power base,' Bensen said.

It's not just the decline of manufacturing in the northeastern states that accounts for the population shift. Those manufacturing firms did not drift south or to the west. Manufacturing shifted overseas for the most part. So why has the population left Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia leave? Again, it is the political climate that created the conditions.

Americans have always voted with their feet. Most voted with their feet when they emigrated to the United States to begin with. You move for jobs and a stable climate to raise families. Who would want to live in the crime in Washington, DC, a district overseen by liberals for 40 years with non-benign neglect, the predictable result of which is a murder rate that is appalling. Those northeastern jobs simply moved elsewhere. No businesses wanted to relocate or expand in the oppressive environments in the northeastern states, states that had followed the California model of anti-business, environmental-obsession.

The business exodus from California to Texas is a symptomatic of what happens when liberals control government without check. The regulatory agencies in California have increasingly burdened companies to the extent that it is cheaper to buy new property, -- sometimes even knowing you can't sell that unused Calfiornia real estate -- and moving en masse with all the expenditure that entails to other more business-friendly states. My husband has worked for three companies who subsequently moved their facilities to Texas or to Nevada, closing their California plants and offices. The burdensome regulations are not safety-inspired in socialist California: a regulatory agency that fines a company millions of dollars isn't intent on correcting a situation so much as taking advantage of an unvoted-for tax, one that, by the way, you do not have to account for in any state budget. The Air Quality Resources Board in California is such an agency.

In order to meet requirements of EPA standards these non-elected, semi-independent environmental regulation agencies whose authority derives from regulation and NOT law, who are appointed by other government officials, have vast authority and a huge budget. They require companies in Los Angeles, for example, to provide ride sharing information and incentive programs to their employees. What this means to most companies is keeping a full-time person on the payroll who has to dedicate 25% to 50% of their time complying with this program. The employee(s) are paid to harass other employees, maintain bulletin boards, post notices for alerts for the following day if a smog alert is anticipated. The employee(s) who oversee the program are required to attend training and the company has pay for the privilege. The companies are penalized if the Air Quality Agency helicopter flies over and takes pictures of their parking lots to make sure the number of cars is reduced. Then there are huge fines. I am not kidding. It is that onerous. At one time I attended a Air Resources Board training for my company where Air Quality-approved trainer bragged how the Air Quality Agency had the authority to arrest - to arrest - a company executive. For safe air.

What is instructional is that most states, despite having far more businesses, do not have the same onerous and job killing, anti-business attitudes.

What is ironic is that it seems to be the exact same pattern you find in old Europe. High taxes, an intrusive regulatory attitude that is largely designed to be revenue generation, agency power building, and ever enlargening public employment, coupled with a burdensome preoccupation with control. Our ancestors left Europe for similar reasons. Only then it was to escape an onerous church, meddling bureaucrats, heavy-handed governments, and a vast patronage system. Substitute the church of Liberalism with its secularism and not much has changed.

Bensen study. Well worth reading.

ANOTHER UN-SELECTED OUTRAGE

If you have any doubt what Liberals actually think of your privacy, check this out. It's in the U.K. but you could expect the Dems to embrace it if they were in power. Cause, frankly, it is power.

Their selective outrage is comical.

TIS THE SEASON

FOX News making friends.

CANADIAN TRAGEDY

I have a special interest in Canadian politics, primarily because I once lived so close to the border and had many friends who lived in Canada. Watching the decline of a country with such potential for greatness has been saddening and infuriating and downright tragic at times.

From widespread government corruption on a scale that would thrill the Mafia and inspire the United Nations, to the activist courts to the massive interference by Canadian media in politics, the country has been moving gradually but inexorably toward what I call continental Europeanism. Canada has lost the traditions of Anglo-Saxon law and, under the Liberals, have embraced Secularism with a passion that rivals the French and Dutch embrace of a Godless world. If Canada inspired to become a Third World nation complete with SARS and French pretensions, they couldn't have succeeded better.

The Canadian Supreme Court recently blessed gay unions. Now they are giving similar blessing to group sex in swingers clubs. The text of their decision, written by the Chief Justice, is here.

Excerpt:

Canadian law on indecent acts, from its origins in the English common law, has been firmly anchored in societal rather than purely private moral concerns. For example, in the early case of R. v. Hicklin (1868), L.R. 3 Q.B. 360, Cockburn C.J. stated that the test for obscenity was whether the material would tend to deprave and corrupt other members of society.

16 However, depravity and corruption vary with the eye of the beholder, and the Hicklin test proved difficult to apply in an objective fashion. Convictions often depended more on the idiosyncracies and the subjective moral views of the judge or jurors than objective criteria of what might deprave or corrupt.

No longer is indecency a community standard. The new standard is - was anyone harmed? If you accept that standard I suppose an attempted murder that caused no injury means you get a pass, doesn't it?

It's like watching a train wreck. It's the kind of social and moral train wreck our mainstream old media planned for us. The operating theory seems to be, if you can't compete with the United States, try to drag it down to the level of Old Europe.

Sad.

SELECTIVE OUTRAGE

Max Boot on the selective outrage about Valerie Plame and more genuine assaults on our national security. [Bolding mine]

Since then [Valerie Plame] there have been some considerably more serious security breaches. Major media organs have broken news about secret prisons run by the CIA, the interrogation techniques employed therein, and the use of 'renditions' to capture suspects, right down to the tail numbers of covert CIA aircraft. They have also reported on a secret National Security Agency program to monitor calls and e-mails from people in the U.S. to suspected terrorists abroad, and about the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity designed to protect military bases worldwide.

CANADIAN ELECTION SEASON

Definitely election time in Canada. Ala Schroeder. When socialists -- and the Liberals in Canada are rotten-to-the-core Socialists -- get in trouble with the polls, it's time to drag out the boogeyman to bash in a public display. It's the U.S. that menaces them from the south.

Molson beer tried controversy in a series of "I am Canadian" with lots of anti-Americanism campaign ads. It's now an American-owned company. And Schroeder is no longer Prime Minister of Germany, so you would think the Liberals would kinda learn something, wouldn't you? NAH That's why they are socialists. Too dumb to get actual jobs.

SCHWARTZENEGGER, MY HERO

Ahnold has spoken. Loudy. Smile. The letter hasn't made his web site yet, but there some good information. Full text of clemency denial.

Look for more politicans to have web sites, bypassing the liberal media.

NOAM CHOMSKY

Noam Chomsky excerpts from a Dutch radio program.

Full transrcript.

Sample of how a linquist distorts the truth.

The victory of the non-violent resistance in Iraq, which compelled the occupying forces to allow elections, that's a major victory.

As they say, read the whole thing.

WHEN THEY OUTLAW GUNS, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL ...

After a $2 billion (with a B) gun registry. Smirk

The Globe and Mail: Canada says no to border fence

It must be election time again in Canada. Americans are threatening to build a fence on the Canadian border and they won't have it!!!

Canada has long fought the perception it's a haven for terrorists, combatting the mistaken belief some of those involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks entered the United States from the north.

There have also been complaints from some U.S. legislators that Canadian immigration policies are too lax, although there are an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 people in Canada without legal status, compared with more than eight million in the United States.

Are they suggesting that the millions of Mexican illegal aliens are potential terrorists? I don't think so, but anything to bash the U.S. and divert attention from their own problems.

From the first page, same edition, a 24-year old Canadian citizen named Abdullah Khadr was arrested Saturday accused by the U.S. government of procuring munitions for al-Qaeda. Just your typical immigrant.

Born to Arab parents who were naturalized Canadian citizens, the six Khadr children grew up mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan during their 1980s and 1990s. Their father, an ostensible charity worker, was a hard-line Islamist who was friends with Osama bin Laden and hostile to Western values. A decade ago, he was briefly held in custody in Pakistan for involvement in a deadly bombing, but he was ultimately let go.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Khadr family fled Afghanistan as U.S. forces invaded. One son, Karim, was disabled in an attack that killed his father. Another son, Abdurahman, spent more than a year in U.S. custody before being allowed to return to Canada. A third son, Omar, was involved in a battle with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He remains in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and has recently been charged with murder.

Just one of their legal immigrants. Connect the dots with this PDF.

MORE REASONS WHY DREAMWORKS HAD TO BE SOLD

The latest Steven Spielberg movie, Munich, is in trouble already if Spielberg has to resort to hiring an Israeli political advisor to Ariel Sharon to try to cushion the movie from anticipated criticism.

Munich promises to be another Spielberg loser and a reason why DreamWorks studios had to be sold to pay enormous debts. (See previous entries) You might just say that it had to be sold to pay for Spielberg's enormous ego because the division in deep dirt was their movie studios. The animation group appears to be self-functioning, but that's because they kept Spielberg far, far away.

We recently rented Spielberg's War of the Worlds. It is a horrendously awful film. A dysfunctional family, a dysfunctional "hero" so badly drawn that you wondered if the intent actually was to make Tom Cruise a retarded parent just to invoke sympathy for the character. Every scene with Tom Cruise was so focussed on him that they could have CGI-ed an entire cast and no one would have noticed. Worse, a movie that featured panicked citizenry had crowd scenes that were so unconvincing that they appear frozen while waiting for someone, anyone, to use a megaphone to tell them to run. NOW. A policeman who obviously moonlights as such because his full-time job must be at Public Works is seen staring down at a widening hole in the pavement authoritatively claiming "There's no water mains down there." In the middle of an intersection. (Policemen know these things when it moves the scene along.)

The extras on the disk include interviews with people who created the monsters. "Steven wanted to call them tripods." "So, going along with that, we gave them three eyes." etc etc etc. Gene Barry was no genius in the original, but he knew it. Tom Cruise has no such humility. And the special effects and artwork people appear to be sycophants whose loyalty was measured by how many times they mentioned "Steven." But the real killer was that they tell you that they decided to do everything opposite of the original movie. The monsters come up from the ground, instead of from the sky. See how original they can be? All of that, however, wasn't the kiss of death.

It was a movie shot with no apparent script, improvisation apparent in just about every scene. In fact, the entire middle section with Tim Robbins was entirely pointless, full of what appears to be unscripted dialogue that went nowhere. It not only was pointless, Tim Robbins with breasts was revolting to see. The only lucid actors in the movie appear to be the child actors whose egos didn't demand they screw around with scenes. The movie may have recouped it's production costs, but I doubt it made enough to pay for the publicity costs which usually cost as much as the movie itself.

The lesson of DreamWorks is that media hype only goes so far anymore. It won't save a lousy movie. The Democrat party ought to be paying close attention. There's a lesson there.

MORE GLOBAL WARMING BULLSHIT DETECTED

Wonderfully coherent David Warren on the "climate change" activists meeting (article written Dec. 3rd) in Montreal.

They are deeply invested in the idea that a human-compounded global climate disaster, which only they can understand, can be prevented only if the world's taxpayers surrender money and power on a planetary scale, to the care and feeding of themselves and their kind.

He understands the futility, if not the silliness. And he has this prediction: "These people will not give up, however. There is too much money and power to be grabbed."

Of course they won't give up. Not when there are 10,000 attendees at the conference, all of whom hope to benefit materially from the plan that, in a nutshell, allows (or forces) some governments to buy pollution credits from Russia, thereby transferring western wealth to the Russian mafia-run government. Chief cheerleader, if not co-architects, are Canadian in citizenship whose chief friendship with the Russians is that they share criminal intents.

CANADIAN HYPOCRISY

Rex Murphy on the hypocrisy of the global warming conference in Montreal that was attended by ten thousand people for a conference on reducing energy consumption: "I don't suppose many delegates walked."

The bigger disconnect at this monster seminar goes further than rhetoric, however. It's that Canada's the host of this sequel to Kyoto, and that Canada's performance since Kyoto --- and remember, we signed on --- is at this date, 24 per cent higher than our 1990 levels. According to our commitment, we're aiming for six per cent lower. So as of 2005, there's a 30 per cent spread from what we've promised and what we've done so far.

The U.S., which didn't sign on, is only thirteen per cent higher than its 1990 levels. Still, around the world, the U.S. is the villain for not signing on, while countries like ours, who talk a virtuous environmental line and host King-Kong-scale conferences to celebrate our commitment, pose as the planet's dearest lovers. Perhaps Kyoto is Japanese for hypocrisy

Indeed.

Link to Rex Murphy columns written for the CBC.

FAMILY FRIENDLY? I DON'T THINK SO.

Time-Warner cable is leaping right in there with family friendly alternative cable service. It will include Disney Channel, C-SPAN2, HGTV, CNN Headline News and the Weather Channel. A sure fire way to attract families. /sarcasm off

Parents Television Council President L. Brent Bozell summed it up nicely. "It is perfectly obvious Time Warner is deliberately offering a product designed to fail." Yes, and they get one Time-Warner station and HGTV which is more and more known as Homosexual and Gay couples redecorate on TV. Just the fare you want your kids to watch. It's no bargain either. At $13 a month, the cable company will probably realize $12 in profit. And, as Bozell points out, Time-Warner assumes that families don't want sports, or religious programming, or classic movies. Or, I might add, FOXnews. Or the Hallmark channel. Or the Disney Family channel. (although I wouldn't want that channel either.) WAM or the NASA channel, or Discovery, or National Geographic. Or a host of program suitable for family viewing.

For those people who are still cable captives, and that includes most poor urban families, it amounts to the dis-education of poor black Americans. Just as blacks in New Orleans were so mired in poverty that they could not move elsewhere, doomed to unemployment and government dependence, crippled by hopelessness, Time-Warner is still herding for the Liberal Plantation.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS

It isn't just Bill O'Reilly's imagination. Chula Vista, California.

MERRY CHRISTMAS - EUROPEAN STYLE

Just in time for Christmas. Belgium has passed a law to allow pharmacists to supply doctors with lethal doses of medicine so that the physicians can euthanasize their patients.

Great gift to the world, no? Those Europeans are sooooo progressive.

The gifts just keep on coming.

Time-Warner Woes

Between layoffs at Time, Inc., including Top Executives, the Warner t.v. operation laying off 300, and the Atlanta Braves up for sale, you might just conclude that Time-Warner is having, ah, financial problems.

NOAM CHOMSKY in the NETHERLANDS

This quote was featured at the Radio Netherlands site to promote an on-air question and answer with Noam Chomsky.

"The insurgency [in Iraq] was created by the brutality of the invasion and occupation - which is, in fact, one of the most astonishing failures in military history. The Nazis had less trouble in occupied Europe, and the Russians held their satellites for decades with far less difficulty
-- Chomsky on Iraq and War on Terror

I suppose our enemies have to find comfort where they can, even if it means nutcases like Chomsky.

REVISIONISM

In France, it's a crime to revise history. Especially Halocaust history. Most especially if you are deputy leader of the National Front party. ("extreme right")

It is not, apparently, a crime though to conceal the collaboration of most of France with Nazi Germany. It was called Vichy France.

Cable News Race

From DrudgeReport:
CABLE NEWS RACE --- TUES., DEC 13, 2005 --- HOUSEHOLDS

FNC O'REILLY ---------------1,825,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES ------1,503,000
FNC HUME------------------ 1,162,000
FNC SHEP ------------------1,176,000
FNC GRETA -----------------1,335,000
CNN KING --------------------975,000
CNN PAULA ZAHN ------------568,000
CNN COOPER ----------------483,500
CNN DOBBS ------------------467,000
MSNBC HARDBALL ------------394,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN ----------376,000
MSNBC RITA COSBY ----------368,000
CNNHN NANCY GRACE --------353,000
MSNBC TUCKER --------------289,000

God isn't dead, after all

Gosh, what a surprise. A new Gallup survey claims some 94% of Americans think God exists. You couldn't tell that by our newspapers, our movies, our television, most journalists, or almost all movie stars. But, maybe that's because they Liberals, who are less likely to believe strongly. (87% of Conservatives vs. 61% of Liberals are strongly convinced.)

Sheeze, you think that's why newspapers are losing subscribers, movies are barely breaking even, and t.v. viewership is down?

You have to subscribe to Gallup to read the questions and methodology.

Knight Ridder on the block

Knight Ridder is on the auction block after their biggest stockholders have demanded the sale. Among the really liberal rags they own The Miami Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer are stand out losers. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the San Jose Mercury News are equally, and predictably, liberal.

Their papers. Find ONE, just one, that is not liberal.

Richard Prior

Stanley Couch, who has grown up, puts Richard Pryor into perspective.