Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Gattigap]

[Gattigap]

[Tables R Us]

According to an ABC poll, 60% of Iraqis support attacks on US troops and about 80% think the presence of US troops worsens internal conflicts.ABC News

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
I guess that is good news. I must say, though, that if the initial estimate was honest, and was at $423b, while reality was $250B, It shows that the Administration had no fucking idea what was happening.

That is possible, but I tend to think the original estimate was way inflated.

S_A_M

I think there is a little of both going on here. This adminstration is notorious for what wall street calls "managing earnings." Jack Welch was the king of this. They essentially "give guidance" that they know they can meet or exceed. But it looks to me that the projected results are even better than they thought, and that is good news. It also lends support to the supply siders.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Gattigap

This is almost perfect. I would have put Newt much taller in relation to those below him.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Tables R Us
the presence of US troops

Presence. Like we're just there giving out candy. Maybe these people should work on beefing up their own military "presence".

[Hank Chinaski]

the dems are breaking out a new ad about how it is the party that is best for military families EXCEPT<>>>>>>>>

they use this image



Which is of a canadian soldier. The democrats don't even know what our uniforms look like? and Ty wanted to give advice on the invasion?

note the ad on democrats.com has been updated to remove this image and ad a flag- they got the correct flag so that's something.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006073.htm

[Gattigap]

This isn't really politics, but for lack of a better place, I thought I'd put this here, because it's about bilmore's favorite paper.

For those of you who don't live in Southern California, you may not know that the LA Times has been involved in a public and rather ugly battle with its parent company, the Tribune media conglomerate in Chicago. Oversimplifying things a good deal, the Trib has been cutting staff and resources at the LAT pretty methodically over the last half-dozen years since the Trib bought the paper from its local owners, the Chandler family.

The LAT (and local leaders) have reacted with predictable horror at these cuts, and things came to a head recently with (1) the local editors refusing to make the latest round of cuts, and (2) various fabulously wealthy people going to the Trib and offering to pay outlandish amounts of money to buy the paper back. The Trib management briefly cogitated on these developments, and then responded (1) you're fired, and (2) thank you fabulously wealthy people, but no.

There are lots of good and tasty themes in this narrative, among them (1) what's to become of the LAT -- which by most accounts has/had some outstanding reporting and national aspirations, but seems destined to become a regional paper, (2) what's really the right size for a news organization -- even after the cuts, the LAT would still have a larger staff than the Washington Post, for example; does this suggest bloat, or a necessity dictated by a different marketiplace (i.e., a larger, more segregated community); and (3) is the LAT's apparent decline the inevitable path for all newspapers, succumbing to the pressures of the Internet?

In the midst of all of this is some impressive reflections by folks who have, at various times, been caught up in this particular storm. Among my favorites is Michael Kinsley, something of a vagabond journalist who spent a year or so as the LAT editorial page editor until being canned by some mangagement who have themselves since been canned. Kinsley serves up some acidly funny stuff in the direction of the Trib, including wonderment at what the Trib really wants to do with the LAT:

• The Los Angeles Times is a collection of mostly superb journalists who on many days put out the best newspaper in America. But what is the point of publishing a national-quality newspaper if it can't be obtained in Thousand Oaks, let alone Washington or New York? Tribune Co. is right that you don't need 1,200 journalists, or even 900, to put out a paper for Los Angeles County. Nor do you need a good website. (And the Times' — through no fault of the people currently running it, who do their talented best with little encouragement from management — is the worst of any major paper.) But why did Tribune pay $8 billion for the Times-Mirror papers in 2000 if its ambitions were so modest?
  
  This won't be a problem for long. National-quality journalists who work for the L.A. Times, attracted by good salaries and great editors (first, John Carroll and now Dean Baquet), endure the frustration of not being read by the people they write about. If money keeps getting tighter and the paper's ambitions keep getting narrower, they will leave if they can, or won't come to work in L.A. in the first place. Then The Times will be an adequate provincial paper like the Chicago Tribune, and the tension of being prettier than the boss' daughter will be resolved.

Together with an anecdote about the management's stodginess:

• I miss the Los Angeles Times. My very first day on the job, I attended the Page 1 meeting in the newsroom. There was a story about a transient who allegedly had broken into the home of a 91-year-old Hollywood screenwriter — author of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and later a blacklisted victim of the Red Scare — cut off his head, climbed over the back fence (head in hand), stabbed a neighbor to death, and was ultimately arrested at Paramount Studios, where guards recognized him from police photos shown on a TV they weren't supposed to be watching on the job.
  
  What a story! But it didn't make the front page. It ran in the Metro section. I asked Carroll, "Gosh, who do you have to decapitate to make Page 1 around here?" Now we know.

That this opinion piece was itself published in the LA Times is a source of real amusement to me. At the very least, the Trib, in addition to fires set by the parent, apparently feels that some self-immolation is good for the soul.

Gattigap

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Gattigap
This isn't really politics, but for lack of a better place, I thought I'd put this here, because it's about bilmore's favorite paper.

For those of you who don't live in Southern California, you may not know that the LA Times has been involved in a public and rather ugly battle with its parent company, the Tribune media conglomerate in Chicago. Oversimplifying things a good deal, the Trib has been cutting staff and resources at the LAT pretty methodically over the last half-dozen years since the Trib bought the paper from its local owners, the Chandler family.

The LAT (and local leaders) have reacted with predictable horror at these cuts, and things came to a head recently with (1) the local editors refusing to make the latest round of cuts, and (2) various fabulously wealthy people going to the Trib and offering to pay outlandish amounts of money to buy the paper back. The Trib management briefly cogitated on these developments, and then responded (1) you're fired, and (2) thank you fabulously wealthy people, but no.

There are lots of good and tasty themes in this narrative, among them (1) what's to become of the LAT -- which by most accounts has/had some outstanding reporting and national aspirations, but seems destined to become a regional paper, (2) what's really the right size for a news organization -- even after the cuts, the LAT would still have a larger staff than the Washington Post, for example; does this suggest bloat, or a necessity dictated by a different marketiplace (i.e., a larger, more segregated community); and (3) is the LAT's apparent decline the inevitable path for all newspapers, succumbing to the pressures of the Internet?

In the midst of all of this is some impressive reflections by folks who have, at various times, been caught up in this particular storm. Among my favorites is Michael Kinsley, something of a vagabond journalist who spent a year or so as the LAT editorial page editor until being canned by some mangagement who have themselves since been canned. Kinsley serves up some acidly funny stuff in the direction of the Trib, including wonderment at what the Trib really wants to do with the LAT:

• The Los Angeles Times is a collection of mostly superb journalists who on many days put out the best newspaper in America. But what is the point of publishing a national-quality newspaper if it can't be obtained in Thousand Oaks, let alone Washington or New York? Tribune Co. is right that you don't need 1,200 journalists, or even 900, to put out a paper for Los Angeles County. Nor do you need a good website. (And the Times' — through no fault of the people currently running it, who do their talented best with little encouragement from management — is the worst of any major paper.) But why did Tribune pay $8 billion for the Times-Mirror papers in 2000 if its ambitions were so modest?
  
  This won't be a problem for long. National-quality journalists who work for the L.A. Times, attracted by good salaries and great editors (first, John Carroll and now Dean Baquet), endure the frustration of not being read by the people they write about. If money keeps getting tighter and the paper's ambitions keep getting narrower, they will leave if they can, or won't come to work in L.A. in the first place. Then The Times will be an adequate provincial paper like the Chicago Tribune, and the tension of being prettier than the boss' daughter will be resolved.

Together with an anecdote about the management's stodginess:

• I miss the Los Angeles Times. My very first day on the job, I attended the Page 1 meeting in the newsroom. There was a story about a transient who allegedly had broken into the home of a 91-year-old Hollywood screenwriter — author of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and later a blacklisted victim of the Red Scare — cut off his head, climbed over the back fence (head in hand), stabbed a neighbor to death, and was ultimately arrested at Paramount Studios, where guards recognized him from police photos shown on a TV they weren't supposed to be watching on the job.
  
  What a story! But it didn't make the front page. It ran in the Metro section. I asked Carroll, "Gosh, who do you have to decapitate to make Page 1 around here?" Now we know.

That this opinion piece was itself published in the LA Times is a source of real amusement to me. At the very least, the Trib, in addition to fires set by the parent, apparently feels that some self-immolation is good for the soul.

Gattigap

What seems to be missing in this story is the fact that the Chandler family became the Tribune Company's largest shareholders in the deal where the Tribune Company bought the Times. A lot of the cuts (which, by the way, have also taken place at the Trib, although on a smaller scale, because the Trib was operated on a smaller scale to begin with) have been instituted due to pressure from the Chandler family who are unhappy with the dividend they have been receiving, or more accurately, not receiving from the Tribune Company.

This is not to all all the blame at the Chandlers' feet. But, they are certainly not blameless.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Gattigap
the Trib has been cutting staff and resources at the LAT pretty methodically over the last half-dozen years since the Trib bought the paper from its local owners, the Chandler family.

the days of big newspaper staffs are gone. fewer and fewer americans read at all. let alone a newspaper.

Ironic isn't it? A liberal party organ like the LAT helps push the Teacher's union agenda, destroying America's great public education system. Now the paper dies from the inevitable fallout of our ruined system.

forseeabilty here?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
the days of big newspaper staffs are gone. fewer and fewer americans read at all. let alone a newspaper.

Ironic isn't it? A liberal party organ like the LAT helps push the Teacher's union agenda, destroying America's great public education system. Now the paper dies from the inevitable fallout of our ruined system.

forseeabilty here?

Actually, from what I've read over the last couple of years, the LAT has been quite critical of the shambles that is LA Unified's teacher's union.

Perhaps, however, you're being more "meta" here, and attributing to the LAT the overall national decline in teaching standards and giving the Times a degree of national influence and power that they were unable to achieve with a distribution that reaches no farther than, say, Riverside. I'm sure the editors will both angrily deny your characterization of their worldview, while thanking you for the implicit compliment of unadulterated power. Nice work.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by taxwonk
What seems to be missing in this story is the fact that the Chandler family became the Tribune Company's largest shareholders in the deal where the Tribune Company bought the Times. A lot of the cuts (which, by the way, have also taken place at the Trib, although on a smaller scale, because the Trib was operated on a smaller scale to begin with) have been instituted due to pressure from the Chandler family who are unhappy with the dividend they have been receiving, or more accurately, not receiving from the Tribune Company.

This is not to all all the blame at the Chandlers' feet. But, they are certainly not blameless.

That's my understanding too. I remember seeing a chart detailing the Trib's ownership these days, which seemed to be comprised of several Chandler Trust entities, lots of arrows, and other shit that made my head hurt.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I think there is a little of both going on here. This adminstration is notorious for what wall street calls "managing earnings." Jack Welch was the king of this. They essentially "give guidance" that they know they can meet or exceed. But it looks to me that the projected results are even better than they thought, and that is good news. It also lends support to the supply siders.

FWIW CBO's prediction was way high, too. Yes, $90B is well less than $170B, but it shows that at least some of that sizable error was perhaps reasonable.

What I find odd is that while it's understandable why they would make a high estimate so that they could "beat" the number, when their agenda is to press for further tax cuts, predicting a $400B+ deficit kind of gives the opponents a pretty handy cudgel to wield. And now that window has closed, so what does it get them? Nothing the Dow all-time high doesn't get them as well.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Did anyone see this NY Times graphic?

With all the arrows pointing in the wrong direction towards Rummy, how can he not be gone sometime between Nov. 7 and Jan. 3?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I think there is a little of both going on here. This adminstration is notorious for what wall street calls "managing earnings." Jack Welch was the king of this. They essentially "give guidance" that they know they can meet or exceed. But it looks to me that the projected results are even better than they thought, and that is good news. It also lends support to the supply siders.

It lends support to the supply siders how? After 6 years of supply side policies, the deficit is down to a quarter-trillion?

Each time we go into supply side territory, we go vastly into the red.