Category: Media

Cablevision Buys Newsday From Tribune

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Cablevision outbid Rupert Mordoch on the deal, which was driven by the problems that Sam Zell had with the debt involved in picking up the media chain.

This is, I think, a good thing. Murdoch wanted Newsday as a financial backstop to the New York Post, which is in a real way his US flagship newspaper*, which would have been bad for its readers.

Newsday is a pretty good mid-market newspaper, and it would have been cannibalized by Murdoch.

*Yes, there is the Wall Street Journal, but it’s not in an philosophical sense a Murdoch paper, which is right wing tabloid.

Looks Like Murdoch Won’t Get Newsday

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Sam Zell bought Tribune company, and then couldn’t handle the debt, so he’s looking at selling Newsday, arguably one of the crown jewels of the empire.

A bidding war has erupted, with Rupert Murdoch (NY Post) and Mort Zuckerman (NY Daily News) fighting it out, but now it appears taht cablevision has trumped them both, bidding $650 million as vs. the roughly $580M of Murdoch and Zuckerman.

Newsday has generally had a good reputation for covering its region (Long Island), and it not becoming a part of Murdoch’s Newscorp is a good thing.

Pumpkinhead is Very Petty

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And it appears that he has gotten Arianna Huffington blackballed from any interviews on her book tour on any NBC property.

She said not nice things about him in her book, Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe.

Note: I do not have one of those Amazon reference accounts. The link is a freebie, because Arianna is always entertaining, and Russert is a complete whore.

Iraq as Performance Art

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Well, it looks like Maliki is promising to disarm all militia forces, using the Iraqi and US armies if possible, in order to put an end to criminality and ethnic cleansing.

Maliki is a leader of a militia force that has been leinked to criminality and ethnic cleansing, and his closest ally, the ISCI, formerly SCIRI, is known to have performed the bulk of the ethnic cleansing.

Is it just me, or does this begin to sound like the role playing game “Paranoia”?

In any case, in response to Maliki’s challenge, someone murdered the nephew of Iraqi interior ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf’s, and hung his hang body from electric pole.

All things considered I never want to see the Iraqi version of the Ashton Kutcher’s MTV program Punk’d.

It appears however, that the residents of Sadr City would not be fans of an Iraqi Kutcher, as the death toll in April is near 1000.

Crossing the Olbermann Event Horizon

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I enjoy watching Olbermann, though I differ with him on one matter, I do not think that Hillary Clinton is the devil incarnate, but NPR’s reporter Ken Rudin, who compared Hillary Clinton to Ales Forrest, the deranged character played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction:

But after comparing Senator Clinton to the insane, murderous, kidnapping, stalking, knife-wielding, suicidal, bunny-boiling character of Alex Forrest, who has to be drowned and shot to be finally stopped in Fatal Attraction, even the harshest critic of Senator Clinton is probably beginning to think, you know, that might be a little harsh. Maybe an apology is in order.

I’m just sayin’ if you’ve lost Keith Olbermann because you are hating too much on Hillary Clinton, you have crossed some sort of metaphysical event horizon, you aren’t going to get out, and all you can look forward to is for tidal forces to rend you into subatomic particles.

I’m just sayin’.

Watch it below.
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More Signs (and Pictures) that Official Government Inflation Stats are BS

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We are starting to see more articles, like this at San Diego Union Tribune, noting that official government inflation statistics are a crock.

I will note that the changes in 1983 to a large degree took housing out of the picture, which is why Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan was so bullish on real estate*, and those in 1998 used hedonic mumbo-jumbo to create the illusion of low inflation.

If you assume that inflation is 2% more than official numbers over the past 35 years, prices have doubled relative to official inflation at 3¼% more, it’s triples, and at 4%, it quadruples.

We may be seeing a tremendous drop in the standard of living of the average American over that time that has been deliberately masked by our government.

*It allowed him to call inflation in a necessity, housing, an increase in wealth. If memory serves, Greenspan was at the center of both adjustments

Obama Just Did Something Mindboggling Stupid

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I don’t care what the calculus behind this is, his decision to appear on Fox News Sunday is very very stupid.

Because top line Democrats no longer appear on their show, Fox has lost credibility, and they know it, and now Obama is sitting down because he thinks that he’s somehow going to charm them into liking him.

Even if they weren’t dishonest excuses for journalists, this would not happen. Journalists are small people who hold grudges over stuff like this, and they buy ink by the hogshead,* so this is a lose-lose.

It’s sh%$ like this that makes me wonder if he’s not ready for prime time.

*OK it’s hundreds of TV stations, but the analogy holds….

Inflation Numbers are Complete Bollocks, Revisited

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I’m not sure why, but it seems to be my day for quoting Martin Hutchinson, this time on inflation, where he points out that without the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjustments, inflation would be around 9%, which means that prices double every 8 years. (Use the law of 72 for quick figuring)

I noted this two weeks ago, and further noted that the mainstream press is beginning to note this too.

I think that correcting this would be a good thing. The only advantages to understating inflation are to collect more revenues from bracket creep, and to reduce benefits pegged to the CPI.

The downsides are legion:

  • It masks declines in living standards, and so removes political impetus for correcting this.
  • Pensioners are short changed.
  • The poorest of the poor are short changed, which takes mild poverty and creates crushing poverty, with its associated social ills.
  • It presents a distorted picture of our society.

In terms of actual inflation, I think that we get out of the credit crunch. If dollars are devalued, which is what inflation is, then repaying loans in those constant dollars becomes easier.

Furthermore, even while home prices decline in real terms, because of the devalued dollar, fewer will be “under water”, which means fewer foreclosures, neighborhood blight, and “jingle mail”.

The Debates

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Switched over to them after 5 minutes from Olbermann, because I didn’t want to hear the intro.

Should have waited 10, but the whole Olbermann hatin’ on Hil is getting really old.

Then the questions. Stupid, really stupid vacuous question. Back to Olbermann. More hatin’ on Hil, back to the debate, and more evidence that Mike Judge was an optimist when he wrote and directed Idiocracy.

At the rate this is going I expect Gibson to ask about the designated hitter rule.

Can’t take it. I’m switching to Good Eats (Alton Brown) until “Bushed” on Olbermann.

I am not alone in my opinions, see here (“shoddy, despicable performances), and here (“perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years”).

I watched perhaps 15 minutes of the debate, it was all I could take.

Next time, I’ll do the home root canal kit instead, or if I can’t do that, then I’ll watch a Fox TV reality show **shudder**.