Skip to main content

The Fishwrap

The Guardian, a British newspaper, is reporting that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton will accept the cabinet position offered her by President-elect Barack Obama. The diminutive French President Nicholas Sarkozy says that what the world needs is a modern equivalent of Bretton Woods; he draws a sharp rebuke from Pat Buchanan. Democrats, under the leadership of the resourceful Nancy Pelosi, have been unable to persuade outgoing president George Bush, not a tightfisted guy when it comes to bailing out FOD’s (Friends of Democrats), to load the US auto industry with tax dollars, wealth that the industry intends to spread around to workers who are far from poor. But Nancy promises to revisit the issue once Republicans vacate the halls of power. Another British publication, the MailOnLine, has some vivid shots of the outskirts of LA being burnt to a crisp. And British import Christopher Hitchens, America's favorite atheist, is still roving the countryside scaring the wits out of Catholic schoolgirls and here and there throwing Protestant ministers and Jewish Rabis into the fiery pit. Why do we need US papers anyway? Rupert Murdoch is not so sure we do. The Australian media mogul points a crooked finger at the hubris of American reporters and editors: “A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.” Comedian Al Franken may get to Washington after all, and we are waiting upon Connecticut’s anti-Joe Lieberman media to tell us what relevance this may have to the Democrat Party. We do not know what to think about this but are certain that American media folk, bursting with hubis, will tell us.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p