Friday, April 24, 2009

Formalizing media's partnership with government, similar to what already exists in baseball

The US government is now considering how to save newspapers. Underlying this is the theory that journalism is inherently good, not your average commodity. Formalizing a government relationship however makes claims of journalistic independence more remote than ever, no matter what the method, ie tax breaks, anti-trust rules, or the vast wealth of tax-exempt (sorry, 'non-profit') contributions. A media advocate argues government 'doing nothing' is not an option, as it might result in a lack of 'robust journalism' in America.
It's similar in baseball, ie, there is no independent baseball press.
  • They will not report serious problems within MLB itself even though it's a monopoly and desperately needs someone
  • not afraid of losing his career to report on it. No one will.
Worst of all is the baseball writers' corrupt awards system, the BBWAA. Post season league awards are decided by the person who appoints the voters--not by the votes themselves. Same as in jury selection. Verdicts are often decided in selection of jurors--not the facts in the case. Politics and manipulation over merit. Why is Jack O'Connell still appointing voters after all these years?
  • The only other people who care about the subject--young baseball writers who aren't yet in BBWAA, and lastly baseball bloggers--would give anything to be in the BBWAA themselves.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

MLB sells out players and fans for political scam of global warming

Shake down artists for global warming had an easy mark with Bud Selig and MLB. One such artist described by MLB.com as 'a senior scientist' from NRDC, Alan Hershkowitz has been given further legitimacy for his bogus cause. This political hack got to throw out the first pitch at the Marlins-Pirates game this week. Hershkowitz' education shows a devotion to politics and money, not to science:

  • ***Dr. Alan Hershkowitz (NRDC senior scientist) sounds impressive until you find his degrees aren't in sciences at all. They are in politics and money:
  • a B.A. (cum laude) from the City College of New York in 1978, and; a Certificat D’assiduite from the University of Grenoble in 1975."
No surprise. Like so many of his kind, it all started at CCNY.
He is a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which partnered with the Pirates last year to launch the team's industry-leading Let's Go Green program -- and energy-free means every dollar spent on electricity at the ballpark will be matched with a dollar spent on natural energy resource development.
  • "Earth Day is the perfect opportunity for the Pirates to highlight the many programs we have implemented that are making tangible positive contributions to the greening of our environment," Pirates chairman Bob Nutting said. "As I said when we launched our Let's Go Green campaign last year, we did not decide to do this because it is popular; we did it because it was the right thing to do."...

Meanwhile, it is time to watch Hershkowitz throw out the first pitch in Pittsburgh"...

A Cubs forum discusses Glow-bull Warming Scam


Saturday, April 18, 2009

Socialism never works because it's really cannabalism

"Apparently in our current political climate "socialism" has become a word that does not convey
  • the horror it actually represents.
  • It has become common and thus meaningless
beyond the virtuous idea of "sharing" and "taking care of the poor"."
  • (WHICH OBAMA ALLOWED BOSTON TAXPAYERS TO DO FOR HIS ILLEGAL ALIEN AUNT. EVEN THOUGH HE'S A MILLIONAIRE).
American Thinker: "People, especially among the ignorant --
  • particularly the college educated --
seem proud to call themselves "Socialists" today. And the supremely ignorant -- our politicians -- go a step further, and
  • celebrate the word "Progressive" as though it had a glorious and honorable history.
I refuse to allow "Socialism" and "Progressivism" to be understood as benign, helpful, caring, sharing- as another way of saying "The Brotherhood of Man".
When I work, I use up hours of my life... my limited, mortal, human, physical life. The money I am paid represents the life I expended to earn it. My pay-my wealth-is my labor.
  • It is the expenditure of some of my body's short, precious life on earth.
So when someone takes my money, they steal my hours of labor. They consume not only the fruits of my labor, but my labor itself, that labor which is
  • the very expenditure of my life.
When someone loots and consumes the money I have earned, they consume the part of my life devoted to producing what they have taken.

What is that but cannibalism?
That is the vicious reality of Socialism.

Don't let the bastards call it anything else."
....always under the guise of tolerance and compassion. sm

Thursday, April 09, 2009

The West is dying because it thinks Google rank can win wars

"Whitehall (UK) officials will train pro-West Islamic groups to manipulate
  • their Google search ranking
  • in an attempt to drown out extremist voices online, The Register has learned.

The policy is being developed despite recent warnings from a group of international experts on radicalisation that such strategies are

  • likely to be "largely ineffectual".

The Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a 200-strong Home Office unit created 18 months ago, has said in meetings it wants to

It plans to train government-approved groups in search engine optimisation techniques, which it's hoped will boost their profile online and battle radicalisation....

A Home Office spokesman confirmed

is part of the government's anti-radicalisation strategy. "In order to support mainstream voices, we work with local partners to help develop their communication, representational and leadership skills," he said.

  • "This support could include media training, which can help make their voices heard more widely, and support the development of skills which allow communities to be more effective in debate."...

In March, a report produced by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) said young Muslims were much more

  • likely to be directed to extremist material online by web forums and offline associates
  • than by Google or other search engines.
  • "Tweaking the results for supposedly extremist terms would be largely ineffectual,

not least because it is unlikely that any but the most callow wannabe terrorist would use a mainstream search engine to find banned material," the authors wrote. ICSR is a collaboration between British, American, Israeli and Jordanian universities."...via Lucianne.com


Sunday, April 05, 2009

Obama White House cronies made millions off ties to bailout banks-Politico

"Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, pulled in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by firms at the heart of the financial crisis, including
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America Corp. and the now-defunct Lehman Brothers. He pulled in another $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund for which he served as managing director from October 2006 until joining the administration.
Both groups are favorite targets of conspiracy theorists.
  • And White House Counsel Greg Craig earned $1.7 million in private practice representing an exiled Bolivian president, a Panamanian lawmaker wanted by the U.S. government for allegedly murdering a U.S. soldier and a tech billionaire accused of securities fraud and various sensational drug and sex crimes.
Those are among the associations detailed in personal financial disclosure statements released Friday night by the White House.
  • Presidential appointees are required to disclose information about their income, assets and investments, and those of their spouses and dependent children, within 60 days of starting work. And the disclosure forms filed by many appointees to top agency jobs have been available for public inspection for some time, thanks to the federal Freedom of Information Act.
But the White House is largely exempt from the act, and Obama press aides dragged their feet on reporters’ requests for the disclosure documents filed by officials in the Executive Office of the President.
  • Craig disclosed that his work for Williams & Connelly included representing Pedro Miguel Gonzalez Pinzon, a Panamanian lawmaker who allegedly murdered a U.S. soldier in 1992, as well as Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a former Bolivian president who has lived in exile since 2003, when clashes between protesters and the Bolivian military killed an estimated 70 people and wounded hundreds more.
During the presidential campaign, Craig, then serving as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama, drew flak for representing Sanchez de Lozada.

Craig also listed among his clients Henry Nicholas, founder of microchip maker Broadcom, who is facing securities fraud charges in an alleged stock option backdating plot. In June, the government unsealed an indictment
  • also detailing a raft of drug and prostitution charges, which Craig called “a kitchen-sink attack on Dr. Nicholas.”
Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama aide, reported $852,000 in salary and deferred compensation from Habitat Executive Services, a Chicago real estate development and management firm, plus nearly $350,000 in director’s fees from groups including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and USG Corp.
Other forms showed that White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen earned $1.3 million from the firm in which he was a partner, Zuckerman Spaeder, and press secretary Robert Gibbs earned $156,000 from Obama’s presidential campaign and also owns a pair of rental properties in Alexandria, Va., worth as much as $1 million."
  • (Those who would've thought this criminal in the Bush administration will fluff it off as nothing with Obama. Not that Bush people weren't crooks, but the point is both sides are loaded with the scum of humanity and you're a hypocrite if you think Obama is different). sm