Who Won The Debate? Fox News Goes Through The Roof; Keith Olberman Goes Way Of Dodo Bird

Keith Olbermann just got his walking papers.  MSNBC just announced that it was ending its contract with him.  “Countdown” was appropriately very well named: 5-4-3-2-1-phhfffft.

Olbermann has a book titled, Pitchforks and Torches: The Worst of the Worst, from Beck, Bill, and Bush to Palin and Other Posturing Republicans.  Well, let’s look at those “posturing Republicans.”  The question becomes, “Which monster did the townsfolk actually drive away from their village?” Bush is thriving, with polls saying more and more Americans are wishing he were still president, a memoir that will now almost certainly outsell Bill Clinton’s and a generally happy disposition.  Bill O’Reilly continues to dominate.  Sarah Palin is doing just peachy, thank you.  And Glenn Beck?  Liberals are all over the web as we speak posting that Glenn Beck’s ratings have taken a giant dive.  But here’s the facts for Beck in his time slot:

Net	5PM	P2+ (000s)	25-54 (000s)	35-64 (000s)
FNC	GLENN BECK	1,920	452	933
CNN	SITUATION ROOM	490	130	183
MSNBC	HARDBALL WITH C. MATTHEWS	603	93	187
CNBC	FAST MONEY	288	53	134
HLN	SHOWBIZ TONIGHT	176	71	91

Glenn Beck’s Fox News program is doing considerably better than the next four programs combined.  It looks like he’s just hurting so bad, doesn’t it?

Liberals like Keith Olbermann have their hysterical shrillness, their poisonous fang-dripping hate and their hypocrisy.  Fox News has actual ratings.

Look at the most recent ratings: FNC, for the record, means “Fox News Channel.”  Do you notice how they dominate every single time slot?

The quite left-leaning Public Policy Polling found Fox News “the most trusted” in last years’ survey.  According to their survey this year, Fox has slipped.  But, first of all, read this.  And second of all, just take another look at the ratings.

Dinesh D’Souza, in his great book What’s So Great About Christianity, begins his first chapter with these words:

God has come back to life.  The world is witnessing a huge explosion of religious conversion and growth, and Christianity is growing faster than any other religion.  Nietzsche’s proclamation “God is dead” is now proven false.  Nietzsche is dead.  The ranks of the unbelievers are shrinking as a proportion of the world’s population.  Secularism has lost its identification with progress and modernity, and consequently has lost the main source of its appeal.  God is very much alive, and His future prospects look to be excellent.  This is the biggest comeback story of the twenty-first century.

D’Souza proceeds to document that claim with facts that will make atheists weep and gnash their little rodent fangs.  [You can read the chapter here].  Secular humanists long claimed that the progression of reason and science would conquer religious “superstition.”  It was a groundless and distorted comparison that is now demonstrated to be a lie, another fairy tale myth of secularism.

Now I cite the beginning of a Human Events article titled, “The Conservative Undead“:

“American political parties have disappeared before,” Keith Olbermann warned Republicans in a 2009 “special comment.” The suspended MSNBC host histrionically continued, “You’re rapidly moving from the party of no conscience towards the party of no relevancy. You are behind the wheel of a political Toyota, and before the midterms you will be reduced to obviously being this generation’s home for the nuts.

To play off D’Souza, “Olbermann’s proclamation ‘The Republican Party is dead’ is now proven false.  Olbermann is dead.”

And to allude to a song from The Wizard of Oz: “Ding-Dong.”  It’s about time.

When it comes to liberals a line out of Willie Wonka puts it best: in a world of pure imagination, what you see will defy explanation.

White House Ignores War In Afghanistan To Pursue New War On Fox News

Up until the exaltation of The One – may socialist Scandinavians place golden medallions around his neck forever – the Democrats’ spiel on Afghanistan was that it was the right war, the top priority war, the just war, the necessary war, but that the devil Bush ignored Afghanistan while he focused on Iraq.

Iraq, of course, was the unwinnable war (even after Bush won it), and the surge strategy was bound to be a costly failure (even after it worked).

Well, now that Obama – in the words of a leftist “journalist” – “stands above the country” and “above the world” as “sort of God,” well, the “change” the left kept blathering about resulted in a change of focus:

Afghanistan is no longer the “war of necessity,” or the “top priority,” or the “cause that could not be more just.”  Nope.  That war morphed into the war that the White House has declared on Fox News.

White House communications director, Anita Dunn:

“We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” said Anita Dunn, the White House communications director.

And:

“The reality of it is that Fox often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

And:

“As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

Mind you, every major totalitarian dictator in the world is more “legitimate” than Fox News, as far as the White House is concerned:

White House communications director Anita Dunn also said this:

“What I think is fair to say about Fox — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

Yes, that’s right.  Dunn is referring to CNN — the same CNN that demonstrated that it is so completely in the tank for the Obama agenda that it actually “FACT-CHECKED” a Saturday Night Live skit.

That’s the criteria for “a news network”: complete ideological loyalty.

Obama pretty much pointed that out himself when he addressed White House correspondents:

“Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me.  Apologies to the Fox table.”

Unlike all the other media, Fox correspondents didn’t vote for Obama.  And that’s enough to declare war.  For all must love The One.  No dissension can be tolerated.

Mind you, while the White House asserts that Fox News is evil because it – alone by itself – is not in the tank with Obama, it’s interesting to see that Obama himself is in the tank for SEIU and the hard-core union agenda as he vows to “paint the nation purple.”

We’ve seen this reaction to media criticism by a president before – from the darkest and most evil days of Richard Nixon.  It wasn’t pretty, and it didn’t end well.

Is Fox the media arm of the Republican Party?  Viewers who are flocking to Fox News in droves don’t seem to think so:

Fox News Channel was the 2nd highest rated cable channel on all of television during the first quarter of 2009 in prime time Total Viewers. CNN was 17th and MSNBC 24th for the first three months of the year. FNC beat CNN and MSNBC combined and gained the most compared to the first quarter of 2008, up 24%. 2009’s first quarter was FNC’s 3rd highest rated quarter in prime time in the network’s history — just behind Q4 ’08 and Q3 ’05. In prime time, ages 25-54 demo, and in total day in both categories, FNC grew more year-to-year than CNN and MSNBC combined. FNC had nine of the top 10 programs on cable news in Total Viewers.

The hardly right-wing UCLA seems to find plenty of bias from all of those journalists that Obama boasted voted for him, rather than Fox:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

To the extent that Fox News is biased to the right, every single other news outlet is biased toward the left.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs’ study concluded that Fox News was in fact the most fair and balanced network, concluding:

Fox News Channel’s coverage was more balanced toward both parties than the broadcast networks were. On FOX, evaluations of all Democratic candidates combined were split almost evenly — 51% positive vs. 49% negative, as were all evaluations of GOP candidates — 49% positive vs. 51% negative, producing a perfectly balanced 50-50 split for all candidates of both parties.

Sacred Heart University’s media study discovered that Fox News was the most trusted in the nation:

Researchers were asked which national television news organization they trusted most for accurate reporting. Fox News was named by 30.0% of all respondents – up from 19.5% in 2003 and 27.0% in 2007.

Those named most frequently as the television news organization most trusted for accurate reporting in 2009 included: Fox News (30.0%), CNN (19.5%), NBC News (7.5%) and ABC News (7.5%). Fox News was also the television news organization trusted least. Just over one-quarter, 26.2%, named Fox News, followed by NBC News (9.9%), MSNBC (9.4%), CNN (8.5%), CBS News (5.3%) and ABC News (3.7%).

In fact, it didn’t come all that far from being TWICE as trusted as the runner-up, CNN (the network that fact-checks SNL sketches that are negative to Obama).

So this war – that again seems to be replacing the “just war of necessity” that Afghanistan was SUPPOSED to be is just ridiculous.

It merely shows just how dramatically ideological this administration truly is.

It also explains why former longtime ABC correspondent Chris Wallace said of the Obama administration:

“They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

Let’s just take a second to consider what Obama seems to think about the media, as evidenced by his selection of Mark Lloyd to be his FCC Diversity Czar.  Remember that cartoon of dictators that Obama has met with?  Obama’s FCC Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd admiringly said this of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez:

“In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.  To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela….The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled – worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government – worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.”

Just as Obama is now taking Fox News seriously in this country.

But how did Hugo Chavez “take very seriously the media”?

Newsbusters answers that by simply pointing to the facts in Venezuela:

NGOs Warn of Restrictions in Pending Venezuela Law

Associated Press – May 7, 2009

Prominent Venezuelan nongovernmental organizations warned Thursday that a bill being drafted by lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez could be used to financially strangle groups that criticize the government.

Chavez clamps down on broadcast media

Irish Examiner – Friday, July 10, 2009

President Hugo Chavez’s government is imposing tough new regulations on Venezuela’s cable television while revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations.

Report: Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez aggressively seizing control of media

Miami Herald – August 14, 2009

An unclassified report lists examples of Venezuelan government efforts to crack down on or seize control of media outlets to stifle criticism.

How’s that for a chronology of authoritarian censorship?

And Obama’s choice for FCC Diversity Czar also had this to say:

[From a 2005 Conference on Media Reform: Racial Justice]: “Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions.  And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem.

We’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.”

It’s nice of Mark Lloyd to acknowledge that there are “good white people” around – just before he announces the need to have a purge of white people from the media.  But Mark Lloyd is a racist who has also said:

“There are few things I think more frightening in the American mind than dark skinned black men. Here I am.”

And Barack Obama also showed what he thought about free speech rights when his selection for FCC Diversity Czar said:

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

“[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”

So we pretty much know where the Obama White House is coming from: the media should be the exclusive tool of leftist propaganda to advance the Obama agenda.  Only Obama voters need apply to be considered as “journalists.”  Free speech is a terribly overrated thing, which needs to be “reinterpreted” to exclude ANYONE who has ANYTHING but a far-leftist revolutionary agenda.  And Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has provided the American left with the model as to how to proceed in that direction.

Obama is dithering around in Afghanistan while our soldiers languish and die for lack of support.  But he seems all to willing to pursue his war on Fox News with a gusto.

In both the war in Afghanistan and the war on Fox News, the threat is to freedom itself.

Why Fox News Haters Can ‘Teabag’ Themselves

I didn’t even know what “teabagging” was in the nasty sense until CNN’s Anderson Cooper (“It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging“), MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (“the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals“) – and numerous others just like them – used the term as a rhetorical propaganda polemic to attack and ridicule hundreds of thousands of Tea Party demonstrators simply because something about tea parties sounded similar to something that warped liberals did to one another.

But now that I know what it is, lefties can go teabag themselves.  It’s pretty much who they are anyway.

CNN’s Susan Roesgen, who handpicked protesters at the Tea Parties and attempted to argue with their political views rather than simply report on the event like a legitimate journalist would have done, is a classic piece of agenda-driven propaganda masqeurading as news these days.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who put failed radio host Janeane Garofalo on his “Countdown” program so he could join with her in agreeing that everyone who attended a Tea Party was a racist who couldn’t stand a black man being president; and put on Michael Musto so he could agree with Musto’s rabid description of Miss California Carrie Prejean as a homophobic female transsexual for honestly answering a simple question about gay marriage.  This, of course, isn’t “news.”  It’s not even “propaganda.”  It’s simply naked hate.

We now can confirm that Walter Cronkite was a tin-foil hat wearing liberal throughout his broadcast career, but does anybody seriously consider him using crude sexual innuendo to attack Republicans or share in the rabid views of hate-spewing guests?  At some point, the mainstream media went from doctrinaire liberal elitism to full rabid hatred.

I’ve written about the fact that study after study has demonstrated that the media is dominated by liberalism.  I’ve written about this in numerous articles, but one paragraph from a previous article should suffice to demonstrate that fact:

The media has been so blatantly biased throughout its election coverage that it is completely accurate to say that we are now in a propaganda state.  There is no possible way that Republicans can win in this media climate: whether you look at the Media Research Center, or at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (or again at their brand new study), or at the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Advertising Project, there is widespread agreement with one longtime ABC journalist that the media is dangerously biased.  Pew Research discovered that Americans believe by a 70% to 9% margin that the media is biased in favor of Obama and against McCain.  The media now represents a fifth column of government – a propaganda wing – that attacks conservatives and celebrates and defends Democrats and their ideology.  Democracy is going extinct in the country that founded democracy, because no free society can survive such a climate of propaganda.

The bias, the ideology masquerading as news, the dishonesty and corruption of the media, is rampant.  And more and more Americans simply no longer trust them.

In spite of all this, we are supposed to believe that it is Fox News – and not the likes of CNN and MSNBC – which is “biased.”

So let us go to Johnny Dollar’s Place in examining “Fox Haters Week in Review“:

Fox Haters Week in Review

Green footballs, fallacious flea bags, and fact-check follies. Slanders, stupidity, and skulduggery are on display in the latest edition of Fox Haters Week in Review.

Fact-Check Follies
Sometimes it seems the primary qualification for attacking Fox News Channel is not knowing what you’re talking about. That notion was reinforced this week with the decision by Fox broadcast (the American Idol channel) not to carry the latest press conference from President Obama. Leave it to the haters to erupt in a fit of gallopping ignorance. One site bellowed:

Fox News Decides Not to Carry Presidential Press Conference…What do you think? Should a national news station carry every president’s news conference?

Apparently at some point they got a clue, and rewrote the piece (though that non-sequitur question remains). But other sites remain clueless, four days after FNC covered the presser in its entirety:

Apparently Fox News is fine with Censorship…Rupert has decided that the Fox audience doesn’t need to actually hear and see the POTUS talk to *them* and the *press.* They’ll get the Cliff’s Notes from Hannity, O’Reilly, and Beck.

The confusion grows deeper here. Those guys are on the news channel. How would anyone watching Fox broadcast get any “notes” at all from them? The next line is classic:

Way to encourage critical thinking skills, Fox.

Meanwhile another critical thinker has a different spin on it:

Fox News Won’t Be Airing Obama’s Primetime Address…The network states they will impose a graphic at the bottom of the screen telling viewers where they can watch the Address. Brilliant… send people to the competition. That always increases earnings, right?

The graphic directed viewers to FNC and Fox Business Network.

Another subject, but the same command of the facts:

Why did Fox News not cover the live town hall speech that President Obama gave at Arnold, MO’s town hall for his 100th day in office? Now Fox being the un-biast [sic] news channel that they are, I assumed they would have played at least 5 minutes of the speech on live national television.

Sorry pal, all of the cable news channels carried portions of the event, including FNC. But don’t take our word for it, see for yourself.

For frothing at the mouth over stuff that isn’t true, this is hard to top:

Fox News Disrespect Against President Obama Continues. Fox News by no means should be classified as a news channel. Fox News has been the single, most disrespectful alliance against President Obama since he’s been in office. It’s almost shocking to see a so-called news channel disrespect the President of the United States on a daily basis and actually be allowed to function as a “news” channel in the United States of America. From Bill O’Reily to Sean Hannity, these disrespectful, bitter, “true” Americans simply refuse to refer to President Obama as President Obama by constantly dropping off the president in front of his name….

• BILL O’REILLY, HOST: In the “Impact” segment tonight, two topics: Is President Obama promoting a nanny state?… But President Obama today on television… But the trend now with President Obama is, we’ll do it for you….
• GLENN BECK, HOST: What was President Obama’s carbon footprint on Earth Day?

O’REILLY: If President Obama were to award the contracts for cap-and-trade…

• BECK: Some people were a little upset yesterday seeing President Obama…
• BECK: He gave President Obama several unique and priceless historical gifts…Brown gave President Obama a couple of things….In exchange, President Obama gave Prime Minister Brown…it’s remarkable to me that President Obama just kind of like went to the video store…
• SEAN HANNITY, HOST: we are tracking President Obama’s campaign promises….
• HANNITY: It is day number 79 of President Obama’s administration…and President Obama isn’t making it any better…

We could go on, but you get the point.

Stop the Paul Bearers!
It seems like some at the right end of the spectrum are a bit uncomfortable with certain points of view. One of the most prominent red blogs, Little Green Footballs, seems to be objecting to FNC because they permit libertarians (gasp!) to be heard. The footballers took early aim at Glenn Beck, rushing to recycle a video popularized by the Huffington Post (and we know how carefully they screen their videos). It documented a 912 meeting with some intemperate language about burning books. When evidence surfaced that the speaker in question may not have been what she seemed, the footballers did not include it their article. Just this weekend they took another shot at Mr Beck, because of the dozens of people in the audience for his Friday special, “several” were Ron Paul supporters. Oh no, how dare Fox News permit even a handful of the gallery to hold such verboten views!

But if you want to knock Fox, at least do so without using doctored links. LGF is outraged because:

Fox News Pimping Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Alex Jones…Judge Andrew Napolitano, who uses his Fox News online show “Freedom Watch” to promote racists and nutjobs like Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, and Alex Jones, is now being pimped on the official Fox News video page.

Before we get to the trickery used here, a disclaimer. We have no love for Alex Jones, whose 9/11 conspiracies are legend. On the other hand, 9/11 never comes up in this discussion. We assume the Judge invited Jones on his webcast because Jones had the Judge on his. Which would be a good thing: exposing the Jones audience to a voice of sanity. But Jones aside, why does it seem to bother the footballers so much that one particular member of Congress gets interviewed? Is Ron Paul suddenly off limits? Have the footballers blasted other channels for all their Paul interviews? Are there other lawmakers that news organizations should shun? Just which opinions are impermissible? Perhaps they will publish a list. Would Peter Schiff (economist who predicted the current downturn) and TV’s Andy Levy also be on that list, since they also appeared on this webcast?

Back to the slippery sleight-of-hand used to create a phony issue. LGF claims FNC was “pimping” the show on its “official video page”. Take a look at the link LGF offered as proof:

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH
&referralObject=4728294&referralPlaylistId=
62f160c4ad50103a40c63f3bef45da415ef95101

Now compare that with the actual link to the foxnews video page:

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html

Why is the first one so much longer? It’s all that extra code in there (like “Playlist Id”) that takes you not to the video front page but rather to a specific video–in this case, the one LGF is complaining about. In other words, the footballers used a link that intentionally highlighted that video to make it look like Fox was “pimping” it, when in fact the default fox news video page always highlights the last-uploaded video (unless you ask it to do something else). This bit of trickery isn’t difficult to do, by the way; you just play a video and click on the ‘share’ button to get the direct link. We could link to this, or this, and claim–aha!–Fox News is “pimping” these stories. But we wouldn’t do that, because we tell the truth about Fox.

Ellen’s Embarrassments
Can there be anything more humiliating than getting up on a high horse and pompously telling someone they’re wrong–only to find out they weren’t wrong at all? It happens so often with Fox haters that we coined a word for it: the Incorrection. And this week’s master is none other than Ellen “Queen Bee” Brodsky, doyenne of the newshounds. She seems to share with the footballers a desire to discredit Glenn Beck at any cost, even if it means making idiotic and patently false claims:

Beck said, “Something is wrong when we don’t take proper precautions on the border when there’s a fear of a swine flu pandemic.” In other words, viewers should worry that we’ll be overrun with contagious Mexicans. Never mind that more than half the cases in the U.S. to date come from non-border states and the state with the most number of cases, New York, is the one furthest from the border.

Say what? Distance from the border may have been a valid argument in the days of the Conestoga wagons, but we have these things called trains, planes, and automobiles now, and it really doesn’t matter how far you go, or where you end up. The outbreak in New York began at a school where students had recently returned from Mexico. Ellen had further insights to impart:

Beck’s voice rose with hammy outrage as he lied to inflame emotion against the Obama administration – by accusing them of “choosing to panic New Yorkers” with the low-flying plane “photo op” that scared so many. It was undoubtedly a bone-headed, insensitive mistake. But there’s no evidence that the Obama administration chose to panic New Yorkers. Why say such a thing unless you’re trying to scare your viewers again…

Ms Brodsky rushes to call Beck a liar, but she offers zero documentation other than her say so; we prefer a more reliable authority:

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and a 747 from the presidential fleet to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

So who lied: Mr Beck or Ms Brodsky?

We have one more Ellen embarrassment to detail, starting with a trademark hound HeadLie:

Arlen Specter Switches Parties, Fox Immediately Brands Him As A Traitor

Ms Brodsky has no quote of “Fox” branding Specter a “traitor”, only asking commenters if the switch makes him one:

Fox Nation “asks,” “Is He Benedict Arlen?” Foxnews.com similarly suggested he’s a traitor, with a home page headline saying Specter “turns back on GOP” and that he “jump(ed) Republican ship.” The actual article is less inflammatory but paints Specter’s decision as one designed to get him re-elected. That’s probably accurate but they somehow omitted Specter’s criticisms of the GOP, that it moved to the far right away from the Reagan Big Tent and that 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats last year.

The duplicity here is extraordinary. The “article” that “paints Specter’s decision” in a way that’s “probably” true but Ellen doesn’t like? It wasn’t written by Fox News. It’s Specter’s own words: the Senator’s official statement on why he made the switch. Ellen insists that it “somehow omitted Specter’s criticisms of the GOP”. It did? Follow the link yourself and read the full article. You’ll find this, precisely what Ms Brodsky says isn’t there:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

If you wonder how Fox haters can lie with impunity and not get called on it, consider the fact that this particular Ellen entry has accumulated over 90 comments. Not one bothered to follow the links to see what the article really said–they just took the word of a discredited deceiver. Or maybe they did do their homework and tried to stand up for the truth, but their comments were made to disappear in the time-honored fashion of the flea bag fabulists.

5/3/09 4:44 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink)

The final paragraph captures the zeitgeist of the age well: ignorant people unquestioningly buying in to an era of propaganda.

The one thing Fox News haters can legitimately hate: Fox News is absolutely murdering their cable news competition in every single time slot.  Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity routinely have more viewers than CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and HLN combined. Fox News Haters can hate Fox for that.

New York Times Endorses Obama As Stock Tumbles To Junk Status

This is what they call poetic justice: the New York Times officially endorses Obama on the same day that Standard & Poor’s downgrade its stock to junk status.

If you’re going to nominate a junk candidate, you might as well make it offical and BE junk.

Maybe being in the tank for liberals, using unfair and deceitful tactics to smear Republicans, and being just generally a disgrace to journalism isn’t the best business model to build upon?  Maybe future newspapers might come to recognize that their readers might want at least an occasional dose of actual truth in their news?

The New York Times says in its endorsement:

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

The problem is that “hyperbole” – and much worse – is also the currency of the New York Times.  And now whether the newspaper or its stock is worth more than toilet paper “truly hangs in the balance.”

Reuters begins its piece on this delicious bit of news by saying the following:

NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters) – Standard & Poor’s on Thursday slashed its ratings on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) into junk territory and cited concerns about the newspaper publisher’s revenue outlook, after it posted a third-quarter loss.

Moody’s Investors Service also said it may follow the move, adding the publisher faces risks in refinancing its debt.

The New York Times posted a quarterly loss from continuing operations on Thursday and said advertising revenue at its news media group dropped 16 percent for the quarter. For details, see [ID:nN23398087]

Thus we can say with rather precise accuracy that the New York Times’ endorsement of Barack Obama is junk; heck, the whole paper is junk!

Bye bye, New York Times.  Say hello to the Dodo bird when you see it on the road to extinction.

Beijing Games: Why I’m Tuning Out This Olympics

There are people who will disagree with me. And this is the kind of issue that reasonable and decent people can see in different ways.

I love the Olympics. As a lover of sports, and a fan of the catharsis that watching sports provides, I have spent untold hours in my life cheering my American athletes.

But not this year.

This year, I would feel dirty if I were to tune in.

China is one of the worst offenders of human rights on the planet. It has grown powerful wealthy by exploiting its poor underclass with low pay and subhuman work conditions. This country that tramples upon the human spirit is therefore the worst possible place to celebrate the human spirit.

Beyond its forced annexation of Tibet, and beyond the smog that is literally five times worst than the worst polluted cities in the West, China has proven how unfit it is for the Olympic Games just in obtaining and then preparing for the games.

China made a number of promises to secure the Games – and broke every single one. They were supposed to improve their human rights conditions, but their megalomaniacal determination to control everyone and everything pertaining to the games, they have actually become even worse human rights abusers than they were before.

Journalists are finding that thousands of web sites have been disabled. They would have to look to find the wiretaps that have been planted in Chinese hotel rooms.

In my view, having the Games in Beijing is tantamount to celebrating totalitarian tyranny. It is tantamount to selling out our most noble human values in order to either be “politically correct” or to simply appease evil in the name of “inclusion.”

My parents are planning to watch the Games. On their view, they are supporting the athletes. No way would I call the people who instilled my values “bad people.” Like I said, this is an issue over which decent people can disagree.

On my view, watching the Beijing Olympic Games rewards the Olympic Committee and China. Money and the ratings points that produce more money is all these people care about, and the only way to hurt them and force them to not deprecate the human spirit in the future is to hit them in their wallets. Hence, my decision.

What do you think?