Burning out his fuse up here alone

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The Cards are beating the Rangers. The Klown is drunk again.

What are you doing?

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Slow News Saturday Open Thread

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The news is slow today so I’m gonna rent a movie. I’ve been waiting for the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie (On Stranger Tides) since I first heard about it.

I first read the book on which it was based (by Tim Powers) several years ago. Pirates, voodoo and the Fountain of Youth all in one story.

I hope the movie is half as good as the book.

What are you doing tonight?

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Saturday Afternoon Open Thread

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The peace was nice, but I miss the prosperity the most.

(via Legal Insurrection)

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Shlock News

Another unbiased MSNBC daytime reporter.

Bruce Bartlett has been using his “I was a supply-sider in the 80s” Republican credentials to go after Republicans for the last 5 years. Recently, he called Rick Perry an idiot. Now, he takes on Fox News in a similarly scholarly manner.

Ailes and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh were quick to recognize that there was an unfilled market for opinionated political talk and that the AM radio dial was the perfect place for it. In 1988, Limbaugh went national with his radio show, quickly growing to hundreds of stations nationwide. It was much cheaper for radio stations to run syndicated programming like Limbaugh’s than pay their own disk jockeys or local talk show hosts. As a consequence, AM radio suddenly became very profitable.

In 1991, Ailes created a syndicated television program for Limbaugh. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, it led Murdoch to hire Ailes to create the Fox News Channel in 1996. It was the fulfillment of a dream Ailes had had since the 1960s, when he tried to convince Richard Nixon to help create a conservative news network to compete with ABC, CBS and NBC.

Now that conservatives have the television news network of their dreams, one question is whether liberals ought to have one of their own. MSNBC has attempted to stake out this position, but so far has not come close to having Fox’s impact. One reason is that Fox’s conservatism permeates its entire schedule, while MSNBC’s liberal programming runs only in the evening. And the fact is that Fox does what it does much better than MSNBC does.

This looks like another case of Paul Krugman syndrome, an economist talking about things other than economics. There are such gaping holes that I’m not sure if Bartlett was lying by omission or is simply a bad researcher. As far as AM radio is concerned, he’s not under any obligation to note that instead of firing DJs, canned AM radio was just changed to a different can of syndicated content. AM radio is now mostly news, sports and talk. Very little of the content is local. the other stuff he writes, is just wrong.

The history of Roger Ailes, for example, is more interesting than what’s in the story. Ailes did not just create a failed Limbaugh TV show in 1991, disappear and suddenly start Fox News in 1996. In the 90s, he was creating call-in shows for CNBC during their low-rated hours after the market closed. He was so successful that he was tasked with creating America’s Talking. It featured almost a full day of news and talk programs. It got into so many cable homes, NBC used it to launch their own news network in 1996. Ailes suggested he could head that news channel, but the network decided their people were better at news than Ailes. In his time, Ailes used NBC to showcase such right-wing heroes as Phil Donahue and Chris Matthews.

Bartlett also seems to be painting MSNBC as failing because they have less “permeated” content. That might be true if MSNBC tried to be the liberal alternative for more than the last five or six years. They tried being the Microsoft (the MS in MSNBC) news channel when they started. They toyed with liberalism a few years later, but 9/11 caused them to become Fox Jr, with such prime time hosts as Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson. Michael Savage had a show on MSNBC in 2003. No, really. After they gave up on opinion broadcasts, Keith Olbermann’s fluff show was spiced up by his rants about George Bush. The liberal MSNBC was born, again.

Leaving permeation aside, MSNBC and Fox News are actually somewhat matched in ideological broadcasting. MSNBC does not only run liberal programming in the evening. Dylan Ratigan’s anti-corporation show is on at 4pm EST. Chris Hayes has a show on at 8am on the weekend. Liberal opinion shows (Ratigan, Hardball, Last Word, Maddow and Ed) take up 13 hours of the weekday schedule. Fox’s opinion hosts (O’Reilly, Hannity) take up 5. It’s 10 if you count Greta, Red Eye and The Five.

This isn’t about the bias of Fox News. It’s about the bias of the coverage of Fox News. Jon Stewart has more credibility picking out oddball things Fox and Friends hosts Gretchen and (former America’s Talking host) Steve Doocey say. It may be cherry picking, but at least it happened.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks and some other guy

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In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama just about everything was segregated, including the municipal bus lines. Wikipedia:

Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created. Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back.[3][4] On some occasions bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard.[5] National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

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On December 1, 1955 a black woman was riding a bus in Montgomery when she was ordered by the bus driver to get up and give her seat to a white man. She refused and was arrested. Her name was Rosa Parks.

On the night of Rosa Parks’ arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women’s Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery’s black community which read as follows:

“Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.”

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That one-day boycott soon became permanent. Black people walked, car-pooled or found alternative means of transportation. They didn’t stage “occupations” or noisy marches, they didn’t disrupt local meetings or speeches, they didn’t picket outside of people’s homes. There were no drum circles.

They sacrificed, and risked their lives. Some, including Martin Luther King, were arrested. King and Ralph Abernathy had their homes firebombed, along with four black churches. Some boycotters were physically attacked.

Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956, the federal district court ruled that Alabama’s racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court’s ruling. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted, and the boycott officially ended December 20, 1956. The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days. Martin Luther King, Jr. capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision. The Montgomery Bus Boycott also had ramifications that reached far beyond the desegregation of public buses and provided more than just a positive answer to the Supreme Court’s action against racial segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott reverberated throughout the United States and stimulated the national Civil Rights Movement.[11]

The boycott resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories and gave Martin Luther King, Jr. the national attention that made him one of the prime leaders of the cause.

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That’s how you effectively use civil disobedience and non-violent protest.

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Sarah Palin says “Wake up, America”

"That's a crony capitalist right there"

You didn’t really think she was gonna go away, did you?

American Crony Capitalism Brings Jobs to Finland

Yesterday, another shoe dropped in the chronicles of the Obama administration’s crony capitalism. A start-up electric car company with ties to Al Gore got a $529 million loan guarantee from Obama’s Department of Energy to build luxury electric cars…in Finland! Leaving aside the fact that to date only two of these $97,000 cars have been sold (one of them to a movie star), we might at least hope that this ridiculous exercise in the government picking winners minus any competitive, transparent process (Al Gore’s venture cap firm) and losers (the taxpayers subsidizing a car no one wants) would produce manufacturing jobs in the United States. Isn’t that the alleged purpose of Obama’s stimulus giveaways?

It’s bad enough that we borrow money from foreign countries to give to foreign countries. Now we borrow from foreign countries to finance jobs in foreign countries. (This kind of reminds me of the $2 billion assistance President Obama provided Brazil for their off-shore energy developments, while shutting down or blocking much of our own off-shore domestic drilling. He’s in favor of energy jobs in Brazil. But in America? Not so much.)

Do you think, as the President tours the country campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime, he understands that voters in Finland won’t get to decide whether or not he keeps his job in 2012, but voters in Michigan and Ohio sure will? In fact, I’m sure the millions of unemployed workers in every state will want to learn why the Obama administration gave half a billion dollars to finance “green” cars built in Finland.

While they’re at it, the geniuses in the White House could also explain the $1.2 billion they gave to SunPower, a company that makes Solyndra look like a blue chip stock. SunPower’s market capitalization is $800 million, but the company is in debt $820 million. What a great investment, huh? Your tax dollars at work, America! If President Obama wants answers about this, he better act fast because his Department of Energy was already caught revising history by scrubbing SunPower’s name out of old DOE press releases. The President should start by asking Democrat Congressman George Miller about the company. Rep. Miller was the leading advocate for giving money to SunPower, which hired his son as a lobbyist.

When President Obama signed his nearly trillion dollar stimulus boondoggle into law, he mortgaged our children’s future. And for what? Financing jobs in Finland? Propping up near bankrupt companies with connections to congressmen? For this we are burying ourselves in a mountain of debt?

This crony capitalism has to end. We don’t want it. We can’t afford it. And we must not tolerate it anymore. Wake up, America, before it’s too late.

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Right now the federal government borrows 40% of what it spends. Now there are good reasons to borrow – long term infrastructure investments, wars, national emergencies – but the government has been spending like a crackhead with a stolen credit card.

“My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of subsidy . . .“

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This is NOT democracy in action

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This is mob rule.

Daily Pennsylvanian:

Protesters storm campus after Cantor cancels visit
Cantor’s office was told Thursday that Penn security was welcoming protesters

Amid Occupy Philadelphia protesters and discrepancies in the attendance policy, United States House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) canceled his Wharton Leadership Lecture slated for Friday, Oct. 21 at 4:30 p.m. Cantor had planned to speak at Huntsman Hall about income inequality.

[...]

His absence didn’t deter activists, however, who assembled inside and outside Huntsman.

“It appears [Cantor] doesn’t want to talk to the 99 percent,” said Jamie Mondics of advocacy group Keystone Progress, after learning of the canceled speech.

[...]

DPS spokesman Stef Karp estimated that about 500 demonstrators were at the protest.

Protesters entered Huntsman by force through Au Bon Pain and occupied the lobby, shouting chants such as “Eric Cantor, come out, come out wherever you are” and “We are the 99 percent.”

DPS officers “formed a human chain to make sure they couldn’t come into Wharton, into Hunstman,” past the lobby, Rush said.

“As long as they don’t disrupt anyone, they’re allowed here,” said a DPS official on the scene, adding that no arrests were made.

“We gave them the opportunity to speak their piece,” Rush said.

As the protesters sang chants in call-and-response, most college students looked on in disbelief around the outskirts of the group.

[...]

The speech was scheduled several months ago and was to be open to members of the press and the Penn community.

[...]

Friday morning, Cantor’s office learned of the anticipated protesters through press reports.

About 500 to 1,000 protesters affiliated with Occupy Philadelphia planned to march from City Hall to Locust Walk in front of Huntsman to protest Cantor’s presence, according to Keystone Progress Executive Director Michael Morrill.

[...]

“I think it’s a shame that a speech at a university should not occur because of some fear that there will be skeptics and critics in the audience,” said English professor Al Filreis, who signed a statement expressing solidarity for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Filreis added, “Clearly, the reason he canceled was that he wanted to speak to a friendly audience, and not one that would ask him difficult questions.

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Cantor was giving a speech, not holding a townhall or a press conference. The protesters were not going there to listen to him. They weren’t going there to peacefully protest outside Huntsman Hall.

They went there to disrupt his speech. Had it not been canceled they would likely have succeeded. This has become a common tactic on college campuses.

I’ve never liked this bullshit. The protesters were not exercising their free speech rights. They were trying to stop someone else from exercising theirs.

What about the rights of the people that wanted to hear the speech?

Democracy isn’t just about asserting YOUR rights. It’s about respecting the rights of others too.

We all have a right to speak, but none of us has a right to force others to listen, nor do we have a right to stop them from speaking.

We have a right to use public space, but we don’t have a right to commandeer it for our exclusive use. We have to share it, and abide by reasonable rules governing its use.

That’s democracy in action.

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