Posted 8:47 PM by Gene

GREG cheers up through all the DO-NOT-CALL-LAW-inspired layoffs -- as he sees hope for the future:

BMOC: College Papers Back Obama -- By 79 to 1

Posted 6:47 PM by Gene

In His own way, PINCH reaches out to the faithful, the true believers, the ones who watch FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News to prove reactionism knows no politics, and says, don't worry, we'll ALWAYS be together.

Still, it is not as though election is a psychiatric condition.

After certain people get through with election it is.

Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

One might dismiss it as an intellectual exercise but this FT blog post is scary. We too remain convinced that people are trying to talk themselves into thinking this financial disaster is not severe, or is easily contained. SIVs and CDOs would seem to speak otherwise. (Of course screaming DEPRESSION!!!!! all the time won't help either.) And it concludes with this observation:

[T]he 1920s had neither television nor the internet. Information, decisions, and implementation can now be carried out in seconds, which harms the quality of decisions and nerves. Transparency is usually preferable, but unmitigated speed might be harmful. CNBC and Bloomberg can spread worldwide panic instantly.

One could ascribe a few hundred minus Dow points to JIM!!!!! CRAMER!!!!!!!!!!! alone. And somehow we can't imagine even The Messiah giving new heft to the ciphers ruling the world. Let us hope Ben and Co. know what they're doing; sometimes it doesn't seem that way.

(Via SeekingAlpha)

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

Here's a charming figure: one in four mortgaged homes may end up "underwater".

Here's another:

Seven hard-hit states -- Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio -- had 64 percent of all "underwater" borrowers, but just 41 percent of U.S. mortgages.

Two Rust-Belt states and five states in smiley-faced Mallopia. It's a wonder more people don't owe.

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

As phair-weather Phillies phans head home to nurse their seventh beer, let us compare Budball's 2008 numbers with 1980's. Average ratings points: down 75 percent. Average total audience: down over 68 percent. Percent of total U. S. population watching in 1980: 18.66 percent. The number for 2008: 4.32 percent.* There is no way around these stats -- thanks to too many reasons to count, Budball has become a game with no hits and untold errors.

*These last two numbers are dubious, to be sure, but add a multiplier effect of people talking baseball and clearly Americans cared for the game far more in 1980 than now.

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

The unfunny cartoonist Garry gloats over his Savior's win in advance, and says it was because of polls. Meantime an editor for Col. says she believes Snoopy doesn't fly in a doghouse, which, for this biz, is something of a first.

Posted 2:55 PM by Gene

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) said Friday that it is expanding its program to modify mortgages to try to avoid foreclosures on up to $70 billion in loans.

Well, thank YOU, Mr. Carbuncle MorganChase! We are SO appreciative! With all OUR largesse it's the LEAST you can do!

Posted 12:03 PM by Gene

Hey SLIME! After all that campaigning in THE TIMES and FAMILY GUY and everywhere else in Your empire NOW You're saying The Messiah will hurt the world's economy?!?

Make up Your mind!

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

PILLHEAD must have 500 interns scattering over this one: Whether The Lord will swear Himself into the throne with His MIDDLE NAME (which TNR helpfully CAPITALIZES). If He does, that would seem to indicate His Church will engage in constant pulpit-pounding, which may not be the nirvana this intern imagines.

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!! says The Lord kicked a reporter off the campaign plane because his paper endorsed his opponent!!!!!

ROMY says The Lord DIDN'T kick a reporter off the campaign plane because of his paper's endorsement!!!!!

I HATE DUELING SPINMEISTERS!!!!!

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

The good news: THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY and the BILL O'REILLY OF THE LEFT could be passé if The Lord wins.

The bad news: PILLHEAD and Loudmouth Hannity would come back. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

"A lot of people are going to suffer from withdrawal after the election," said Hunter, only half-joking. "What are people going to talk about after there's no more campaigning?"

THEMSELVES, as always.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

Please, pretty please Messiah -- be MODERATE!

(Via Contentions)

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

If one in seven voters is still "persuadable" at this stage one must ask, how little do they know or, how little do they want to know?

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

PEOPLE NEWSRAG lists the Large Hadron Collider as its fifth best invention of 2008 (yes, another listicle), which may explain why PEOPLE INC. just decided to lay off 600.

Oh, we think the Aquatic Geek may be another of the 50, but lacking a list we're not about to click fifty times to find out.

Posted 11:09 PM by Gene

Speaking of grim milestones, this USAOKAY!!!!! show-biz publicist takes a different tack from years gone by in plugging the Os-CAR® nominees -- he avoids the word dark!

Duh, how many did GCI just lay off?

"The illusion that this all happens because a movie is good is out the window," Poland says. "The reality is, there is a structure and a business to campaigning for an Oscar."

TRANSLATION: The Os-CAR® nominees are mutts with a pedigree.

Posted 11:05 PM by Gene

Oh dear -- bad news for the hacks:

U.S. deaths hit low in Iraq

Remember how they kept giggling and chortling about their GRIM MILESTONES? That act seems funnier now.

Posted 11:01 PM by Gene

If there's one thing British radio needs, it's a ZONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.

Pfffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 10:55 PM by Gene

AS PREDICTED.

Only Zelig would think single-digits for the first time GOOD.

The solution seems so handy. Start the games at 7:30 p.m. ET, especially on the weekends. That means the first pitch, not a Fox pre-game talkathon. Given the usual length for a World Series game, the late innings would come from 10-11 p.m. Very comfortable viewing time from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

EEHOVER ME BLUUDY DEAD BOHDEE!!!!! Or however they put it in Kangarooland.

Posted 10:49 PM by Gene

Exclusive: U.S. Expects Bin Laden Message Near Election

We were about to say "Brian Ross -- wrong as usual", but thankfully ESPNCORP Network News seems to be an equal-opportunity empty speculator.

Posted 10:48 PM by Gene

The Econowiz, again endorsing a candidate and holding its nose, discerns a pitfall for The Lord:

[T]he risk remains that on economic matters the centre that Mr Obama moves to would be that of his party, not that of the country as a whole.

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

Say, thanks to you Bettino, Madman Muammar (so it says here) got to off a couple of hundred Pan Am passengers over Lockerbie!

Hope it's warm enough down there for you! How's BENITO?

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

Unlike with the sad case of the Christian Science Monitor, we would not be unhappy to see Metro go; it added a second rip to rip-'n'-read. It's also trash on the sidewalk. That said it provides a useful service for some. Perhaps people will go back to paying for a newspaper. Now there's a thought!

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

Obviously Joel Kotkin is a Boom! Boom! Republican, but to sum up what he says: 1. The cities have too many condos, 2. The cities have too many surplus financial jobs, and 3. The cities can't come back with dreams of "convention centers, stadia and associated nonsense."

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

I believe for the first time we have a reasonably balanced account of what The Lord may do in opening His Church. It stands to reason He would not wish to squander His political capital -- and He won't have much economic capital to begin with. If The Messiah can prove to be the coalition builder He occasionally makes noises as being, we will stop referring to Him with sacred sarcasm. The problem is, the ancient Congressional leadership may try to tempt Him, and, like Eve, He may find the temptation too great.

Posted 12:07 AM by Gene

I smile, though two people read me:

No one in baseball’s hierarchy wants to address shortening the regular season. And no one will even consider a warm-weather, fixed site for the World Series. [Emphasis added]

Great minds think alike!

P. S. on 10/30 at 10:50 a. m. Peter Gammons thought of it first. Great minds still think alike!

Posted 11:55 PM by Gene

More evidence of the permanence of this undying triumph in a juxtaposition from BloomyLite:

Sports

•Phillies Win World Series for Second Time After Beating Rays 4-3 in Game 5

•John Daly Spends Night in Jail After Drunken Night at Hooters, Police Say

And I ruefully recall how he was the Great New Thing of Golf. What a joke.

Posted 11:44 PM by Gene

NUF SAID.

Posted 10:47 PM by Gene

I just came across this on ESPN.com, from its Magazine, from Rick Reilly, about the revered basketball coach John Wooden:

He never made more than $35,000 a year, including 1975, the year he won his 10th national championship, and never asked for a raise.

Saccharine nostalgia will not do, but dammit, we've lost something.

P. S. He's 98 now, and from all accounts he has lived a truly good life in every way.

Posted 10:09 PM by Gene

Well, The Other Messiah has come. I did a thing just now I'm a little ashamed of; a bunch of younguns were making a lot of noise in my hallway, and afraid they'd do it all night I opened the door and gave them the evil eye, which shut them up; now I presume they'll be drunk for hours. I suppose I shouldn't have done it; and it's no excuse that living alone and without a family (may as well admit to it) has turned me into a human prune; but I'm dyspeptic. The world ignored this triumph despite its name being attached to it, and on Friday it's back to being a dysfunctional city with little industry, a huge underclass, murders (down 51 this year, at least), bureaucrats as parents and spiraling debt. The only beneficiaries are the owners, who will now drool over their ranking in Forbeslist, and the players, about to triple their salaries in other climes.

I only hope the "celebrations" aren't too severe.

P. S. at 11:05 p.m.: Most of the celebrants seem to be in their twenties. Perhaps I'm sour as I find it increasingly hard to fit in Center City thanks to Rendellism and its notion of educational factories über alles; it's become a hip haven of Connies and Clydes -- where I live is a defacto dorm -- and I've lived in this town long enough to know well enough when most apartment buildings were elderhostels. Part of me resents the change; so if I overstated the notion the other night of Blutoism it was with a rather shriveled heart. Part of me would celebrate too, if I were twenty-something and drank. In the end it's like New Year's. Who in his right mind celebrates being one year older, unless he's eight?

Besides, I must admit, the Phillies haven't been the same for me since Whitey died. That was the year before MARK!!!!! and SAMMY!!!!!, the GREATEST YEAR IN BASEBALL HISTORY, the year that ruined the sport for me and others forever.

Posted 8:09 PM by Gene

Shhh, don't say anything: The Lord has...poor relations.

We wonder what SLIME is up to. One day praising The Lord -- well, every day thinking of Himself.

Posted 7:10 PM by Gene

Uh, Rog, I don't think Ed Sullivan had The Man on.

Sullivan had a keen understanding of what various demographic segments of his audience desired to see. As an impresario for the highbrow, he debuted ballerina Margot Fonteyn in 1958 and later teamed her with Rudolf Nureyev in 1965; saluted Van Cliburn after his upset victory in the Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow; and welcomed many neighbors from the nearby Metropolitan Opera, including Roberta Peters, who appeared 41 times, and the rarely seen Maria Callas, who performed a fully staged scene from Tosca. As the cultural eyes and ears for middle America, he introduced movie and Broadway legends into the collective living room, including Pearl Bailey, who appeared 23 times; Richard Burton and Julie Andrews in a scene from the 1961 Camelot; Sammy Davis Jr. with the Golden Boy cast; former CBS stage manager Yul Brynner in The King and I; Henry Fonda reading Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; and the rising star Barbra Streisand singing "Color Him Gone" in her 1962 debut. Occasionally, he devoted an entire telecast to one theme or biography: "The Cole Porter Story," "The Walt Disney Story," "The MGM Story, and "A Night at Sophie Tucker's House."

DEFINITELY, no.

Posted 6:59 PM by Gene

And as we prepare for the riots, or at least the bottle throwing and vandalism, our be-loved MAYER says in so many words all that police overtime will be paid for by exactly the reason we need to pay police overtime.

You planning to levitate for The Lord?

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

Hed of the Day:

Teen who killed his family will have few options as inmate

Despite several ideas we decided "no comment" was best.

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Marty reminds us if Boobs had had any brains or sense or speaking style he could have spun a mighty thick thread around the House Democratic leaders -- but then no one expects FDR from either party anymore.

And lately, the more I've thought of The Lord the more I've thought of Nixon. They have three salient character traits in common: "literacy", intensity and humorlessness. I haven't mentioned their intense stares and burbling baritones. And in the back of my head I think The Messiah is just as capable of obsessing over His enemies as Tricky Dick. We hope not. We shall see.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

That final hour should tell us the Wall Street Casino is still capable of playing some big money-losing tricks on the sucke...investors.

P. S. at 7:55 p. m. LITTLE JEFFY DID IT!

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Speaking of the Big Double-A Scribble, proof some in-the-know trade jernalists may not know as much as they think:

Using its network and other media assets to promote its artists was one of the more attractive propositions when CBS announced the revival of CBS Records in 2006. The label was first established in 1938, and was home to musicians such as Aerosmith, Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Earth, Wind & Fire, Billie Holiday, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Streisand. In 1988, CBS Records was acquired by Sony, and a few years later, was integrated into Sony Music Entertainment.

There's NO RELATION between the two outfits, Brian -- except for a NAME.



By the way, since SUMNER's forever in a tizz over people stealing His intellectual property rights -- are we alone in thinking His logo looks a little like



this one?

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

In other MICKEY D's news, the chain tries to deke costomers who'll soon be paying for one less slice of cheese in their McDouble by turning its packaging into a HI MOM! moment.

IT'S STILL ONE LESS SLICE OF CHEESE.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

The more we hear of "close" (a lot of it from con-SER-va-tives) the more we imagine one of two outcomes: 1. The Lord wins by 5 or 6 points; or 2. Boobs wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College.

Plus add balky voting machines into the mix and it's going to be a tough night.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

Al-Qaeda geek Momin Khawaja found guilty of Bluewater bomb plot

This hed raises a question: How many geeks are in Al-Qaeda?

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

After Hudson deaths, Chicago vows to fight rising murder rate

TRANSLATION: If the Windy City's immortal mayor (and we mean that literally) and its other mu-ni-CI-pal types can avoid doing anything about ghetto crime and NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, they will.

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Hey Zelig! I got an idea: How about Your Festival in neutral warm-weather sites?

Well, we figure, that other big sport does it -- You know, the one with the odd-shaped brown ball? And that doesn't hurt its ratings.

Just a thought, Zelig. We know You haven't any.

Posted 3:29 PM by Gene

Boeing sees China buying 3,710 new planes by 2028

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That will save our economy! DOW 100,000!!!!!

Posted 12:04 PM by Gene

One may doubt show-biz is recession-proof when it is so quality-proof.

Posted 12:01 PM by Gene

BUNSEN HONEYDEWS FOR THE LORD!

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

We may wonder that more NASCAR owners have not been charged with cheating on their taxes.

Posted 10:14 AM by Gene

BizWeek gloats that cable's no longer a discretionary item! So why did CMCSA (doesn't that ticker symbol barely suggest an indecent word?) go down 8% despite increasing its extortion? Because Brian Robber can't get new subscribers? Who needs new subscribers?

Posted 10:05 AM by Gene

My favorite restaurant MICKEY D's is removing a slice of cheese from the double cheeseburger, calling it a McDouble, selling it for $1, and hiking the double cheesburger's price to $1.19. We know all about commodities but we also know all about Mickey D's, the Mickey Mouse of capitalism.

Who'll wager the McDouble's still on the menu after a couple of years?

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

So much for VW as the world's market-cap leader. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

"A lot of people like to make fun of cable... They think it’s something for people who don’t get news...."

We get the news, Phil. We don't get cable.

(But that's only because we still haven't gotten our HD monitor yet -- and even then we still won't GET cable news.)

Posted 8:54 PM by Gene

Banks are in defensive mode, reducing assets on their balance sheets and hunkering down for their annual year-end book closing. They aren't about to go back out on a limb with credit.

Add that to the slowing economy, rising joblessness and an unstable housing market, and it's a safe bet that lending will be slower for the foreseeable future, no matter how much the government urges bankers to ignore their own business instincts.

Business instincts? Wasn't it their brilliant business instincts that got them into the position to fleece Uncle Sucker?

Posted 8:51 PM by Gene

Hey Messiah! Would you like to personally speak with Nukeman over this one?

Posted 8:33 PM by Gene

Could SLIME be next to waste His money on THE GAMES?

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

I hate citing Howie Hairshirt since he's such a profitably self-serving ninny, but I have to as he reports sad news: The Christian Science Monitor is all but ending its print edition. Of course this has many reasons, not least the "church"'s declining fan base, and its screwy finances, and an exorbitantly failed TV venture; but at least for most of its time the Monitor has stood for good, sound, dull reporting, and if the last word doesn't fit in perhaps it should; maybe good reporting shouldn't be exciting.

Oh -- and we mustn't forget THE DO-NOT-CALL LAW. This may have helped claim yet another innocent target.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Drug prices highest in poorest neighborhoods

This is one reason we may need a Democratic reign. But then the party brings in so much excess baggage....

I hate knee-jerk REPUBLICANS! I hate knee-jerk DEMOCRATS! I HATE KNEE JERKS!

P. S. Somebody alert QUIN -- SOCIALISTS RUN REUTERS!!!!!

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Another reason to PRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAISE THE LORD:

Gates: Future for U.S. Nuke Arsenal Looks 'Bleak'

And with Treasury Secretary BARNEY announcing a 25% defense cut that future may look bleaker. By the way Barn, it's not just sabre-rattling; it's keeping our missiles and warheads from going kerflooey.

My guess is The Lord will let the Secretary of Defense know who the real Secretary is.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

Okay Dave: Is this a mea culpa or a middle finger?

The bad news: KAPLANCO up nearly 49. The good news: the bond-rating agencies may downgrade its debt.

P. S. at 6:26 p.m. It turns out there's a KAPLANCO in the learning biz -- and it's not related. So we'll just call it KAPLAN INC. KAPLAN INC. does.

Posted 4:00 PM by Gene

Dow up 900, which is every bit as moronic and panicky as down 700.

Posted 3:57 PM by Gene

GanNETt's laying of 10 percent of its newspaper staffers.

THE DO-NOT-CALL LAW, GREG!!!!!

Posted 1:36 PM by Gene

OOOOOooooh, Dubya's getting mad! He just told the banks to stop hoarding money and start lending it!

We'll see who runs the banks.

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

Now, having all but elected His Holiness, having swooned over Him and kissed His feet, NEWS HACKS are now starting into their MEA CULPA MODE for having done so!

I HATE NEWS HACKS!!!!!!!!!!

(Via, oh well, Contentions)

Posted 11:41 AM by Gene

The TWXSTERS have re-issued the Our Gang shorts on DVD, and it sounds to us like a mixed blessing -- at best:

In one particularly eyebrow-raising short, Stymie - Buckwheat's predecessor as the main black member of the gang - thinks his brother has been turned into a monkey by a magician. In another, Lincoln Perry, the notorious actor known as Stepin Fetchit, turns up as Stymie's shuffling, slow-talking dad.

We salute PEOPLE WARNER for refusing to censor this sort of thing (that means George Feltenstein, the extraordinary head of Warner's video archive operations), but we never found these shorts funny as we watched Al Alberts Showcase (those who saw it will know what we mean), and the dialogue was soooooooooooooo sloooooooooooooooow, and you could drive three 150-car freight trains through the pauses, and all the jokes were written by Western Union, and there was that infernal one-tempo mickey-mouse music (which sounded better issued on CD -- slightly). Such Our Gang gags would not be funny in Warner cartoons (we're thinking the monumentally-banned "Coal Black") -- and we know they're not funny in live action, and especially when Our Gang does them...and they're definitely NOT funny with Stepin Fetchit.

And we've bought all four of Sony's new Three Stooges collections thus far, itself a mark of dubious taste.

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

The NEW! CW™ says the press is biased against Boobs but it isn't really biased because the bias is a momentum bias and not an ideological bias, and one kind of bias cancels another out, and...

Guys, why not just sell out to KAPLANCO as we think you will?

P. S. We had previously referred to a KAPLANCORP until we discovered there's a contractor of that name in Massachusetts, with a Web site, and not wishing to embarrass an innocent party, we'll now speak of KAPLANCO -- enough for a GUILTY party.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The use of athuhlete-students' names on fantasy-sports sites may finally force the professional college sports trade to pay its indentured servants.

Posted 9:37 AM by Gene

Well, Boobs McKeating's leading the polls in Israel.

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Divided government doesn't work because it doesn't give our side the chance to run the government!

I hate these ultra-spinmeisters!

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

And in other Hollywood buncombe:



No NORM, we couldn't do it without YOU APPLYING THE TAPE.

Although this article unintentionally points out how susceptible we are to fads, and this may be America's most faddish election ever.

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

Heaven forfend -- on the Great Sacred Ground of Poynter they're also planning SPECIAL TWENTY-SECTION SOUVENIR WORLD SERIES VICTORY EDITIONS!!!!!?!?

Although there it would seem like more of a lost cause, suspensions notwithstanding.

Oh and Rick, it's "particular."

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

How do we know NEWS HACKS have gone too far?

When Linda Bloodworth-Thomason criticizes KEITH O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

One definition of stupid:

VW overtakes Exxon as world's biggest firm

Posted 8:21 AM by Gene

The World's Greatest Blogger stumbles upon an ASTOUNDING, ORIGINAL thought, much as Newton discovered gravity when the apple found him: Are these two bozos the BEST we can DO?

Jeez, now we understand your EARTH-SHATTERING REPUTATION, Perfesser!

Or to quote from Forbeslist's Thought of the Day:

"Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank."
-Karl Von Clausewitz

(Via Contentions, which is known for falling apples too)

Posted 11:29 PM by Gene

Mogul's Friend wants an Os-CAR® for "COMEDIES"!

Why the hell didn't they fire YOU?

Posted 11:16 PM by Gene

Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a speech on Monday that the number of reports of nuclear or radioactive material stolen around the world last year was “disturbingly high.”

Best not to ask what the League of Nations will "do" about it. We know.

Posted 11:11 PM by Gene

Deep Throat had a director?!?!?

Say guys, if you want more heds like "LA Times Lays Off 75", you'll run lengthy obits with the word "iconic." RIGHT PINCH?

Posted 10:41 PM by Gene

Shucks, Sen. Moderate and Jack "Drone" Reed won't help The Lord. What shall He do?

(Via Marc Ambinder)

Posted 10:33 PM by Gene

I think I see what Jonny's trying to get at -- that Al Franken could be a great Senator because he's iconoclastic. Problem is (beyond the cliché that Congress reeks with comedians) the House already had a Rush Limbaugh, and PILLHEAD's partisans ascribe to Him a fiery wit, which usually takes the form of self-serving tantrums. No, we'd guess Al's iconcolasm won't rise above the level of boilerplate, seasoned with an occasional media-friendly bon mot, or, with luck, a little foolish foot-stomping --- and we doubt he'll pass as much legislation as wind.

Better still, of course, would be to let Franken be Franken, or rather what he thinks Franken should be, which would mean a campaign issue every day.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Posted 10:19 PM by Gene

The Lord's Acolyte of the Interior at Columbia:

[H]e told the audience he decided not to run for president because he had clashed with his party over so many issues. But, he said, "Maybe I was wrong."

Thou? Wrong? Never.

Posted 10:10 PM by Gene

In the presence of The Lord, every hack "with a notepad and a word processor thinks he's Norman Mailer."

Thus it has always been, only more so.

Meanwhile the LALATimes has just laid off another 75, mostly in its publici -- er, feature-writing department, which has no relation to this, nor will the layoffs to come.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

The Great Alaskan Boar is found guilty (slightly unexpectedly, given the recent jury shenanigans), meaning not the end of pork, but that someone will have to dispense it more stealthily.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

The BEEB has its own O--- and A------ (we'd rather not have to mention their names)...

The show was cleared for broadcast by a senior editorial person at the corporation, although making malicious or abusive phone calls is a crime and can lead to a fine or a sentence of up to six months in prison.

...and an ostrich farm too!

Posted 10:17 AM by Gene

U.S. newspaper circulation declines accelerate

LET US PRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAISE THE LORD!

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Please, God, please, don't let us turn TOO socialist -- even if giving to bankers is for a good cause!

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

A condo architect scratches his head over the Great Manhattan Condo Boom, and comes up with an answer:

And what will the market look like a year or two from now? “I think there will be a lot of empty apartments,” he said.

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

Let's take a guess: What has required more resources at the oh-no-we're-not-in-default StinkyInky Publishing Co.: local news since January, or the SPECIAL TWENTY-SECTION SOUVENIR WORLD SERIES VICTORY EDITIONS!!!!!?

Posted 8:10 AM by Gene

Was ever there proof the League of Nations is worse than useless?

Posted 6:49 AM by Gene

Meantime USAOKAY!!!!! campaigns for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meaning with markets tanking we're looking at below $9.00 a share for GCI, n'est'ce pas?

Oh well, Democrats in government can't help everybody. Unless we have a NEWSPAPER BAILOUT PLAN.

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

Okay KAPLANCORP, how do we CAMPAIGN on this story?

1. Oh not to worry, President Obama will NEVER take away your GUNS!

2. SERVES THE REDNECKS RIGHT!

Posted 1:14 AM by Gene

Last line of a review of what by all accounts is a very fine critical film compendium by David Thomson:

So why bother to ask, as he does here, “Is it possible that the movies are going to end up as museum pieces?” They already have.

Posted 12:59 AM by Gene

Once again, in "GAMING", the house loses.

Posted 12:36 AM by Gene

And I must post this picture from LALATimes.com of a funfest in San Diego because Blutos were clearly at work there. Thanks to these louts the San Diegans will be voting on whether to ban alcohol from their beaches. Anything that quiets Blutoism I favor.

And in the end I see little difference from drunks honking horns and drunks rioting, because it takes so little to touch them off. That may be why we don't have SELIGFEST games on Fridays -- or deciding games on Saturdays.

Posted 12:03 AM by Gene

I think I know why these Blutos cheering gets on my nerves. Fifty years ago fans would have celebrated with a few minutes of cheering and camaraderie and quiet contentment. Now the game is for child-men to see who can make the biggest drunken ass of himself, all because they saw it in a fifth-rate "comedy". It's this desire for permanent adolescence that has scarred the boomers and their offspring. Permanent adolescence may be at the heart of the mindless spending that has brought on the credit mess. I could do without the Blutos showing off. Fortunately a blowout on a Sunday night has taken some of the sting out of their celebration.

And what with Selig's brilliant management this could be the first single-digit-rated SELIGFEST ever. People are only watching here, in a town thinking it can cheer off low esteem and arrested development; they're barely watching in Tampa. The Bill Gates of Sport deserves it. But does America deserve it? We once followed the Series, the Miss America Pageant, the Os-CAR®s. Now they're shadows. What good does it obtain us not to be able to hang our hopes on anything?

Posted 9:39 PM by Gene

Bunsen Honeydews may try to convince us that their research on providing human brains with a glorified USB port "will let a paralyzed person pick up a cup and take a drink of water" and all that, but the fact remains when such a human-computer interface becomes reality we will cease our identity as homo sapiens.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily, with its usual oblivious squib)

Posted 8:46 PM by Gene

Speaking of, the latest notion is that Nukeman is "exhausted", to which we say, something was supposed to be wrong with North Korea's midget tyrant, and somehow evil endured.

Oh, I forgot -- Dubya says we're not supposed to call the midget evil anymore.

Posted 8:44 PM by Gene

Nearly Two Years Later, Voters Suffer Electoral Exhaustion

Say what?

Posted 8:31 PM by Gene

If it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A Scribble Time;

1. We can thank the -- whatever this economic hiccup is (not to mention private-label firms) for disabusing consumer-goods outfits of the notion they can raise prices with impunity.

2. We can further thank the -- whatever this economic hiccup is for disabusing content providers of thinking they can charge $200 a month for cable and the like and $1000 a year for formerly "advertiser-supported media" with impunity.

3. The tiresome political sites that will see traffic evaporate after Election Day think they can stem the outward flow of eyeballs with line extensions. Good luck!

4.


PepsiCo and its extremely PC CEO are spending zillions changing their flagship's logo, thinking it can drive sales. To which we say, what good did changing the logo do AT&T or UPS?

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

Apparently flipping the bird to TV viewers with the annoying SeligSigns™ behind home plate while getting a chance to rest your feet on a luxury-box railing won't cut it when your shares fall 76 percent.

Oh by the way SELIG, that was quite a COUP you engineered there -- starting a game at 10 p. m.! That should do WONDERS for your ratings!

Posted 1:48 PM by Gene

Back to the future.

Posted 1:37 PM by Gene

Clinton WH vets doubt Obama openness vow

But so long as He's a Democrat it's okay.

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

Say! You think NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! could hit the ghastly Hudson family murder after all?

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

While the Democratic SuperCongress is busy with its kangaroo court against VEEP BIG-OIL AND CO. maybe it could investigate where all our hyperrich-banker bailout money is going.

(Via Jim Fallows)

Posted 1:12 PM by Gene

Tom Thumb golf, Zeppelins...

Sure we're not entering another Great Depression?

Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

I REPEAT: THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IS NOT OVER!!!!!!!!!

Oops.

SHUT UP, MS. TRAVERS.

Posted 11:33 AM by Gene

One thing that increasingly bothers us is that "investors" (or rather, disinvestors) have thrown the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Looking at charts we're astonished how many stocks just cratered in September. We wonder if indexes like the DJIA and the S&P may actually underestimate the carnage. When a company like Pep Boys has a market cap less than the value of its store fixtures that should be a bargain, but with the disinvestors throwing stocks overboard right and left perhaps there is no rule for value.

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

There's a big fight in England over a supposed vast increase in on-air swearing, and the contest-rigging, news-biasing Beeb naturally says, "NOT ME!" (In the manner of big business by assuming a thoroughly fake "responsibility", that is.) The only solution to such trends is to give up. BIGMEDIA pay no attention to even the staunchest complaints, and the Web, which increasingly inspires them, is a worldwide sea of garbage.

Posted 11:14 AM by Gene

Finally, KAPLANCORP engages in a little -- investigative reporting on Our Savior:

Sen. Barack Obama's record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet. [First graf]

And here is the source:

Concerns about anonymous donations seeping into the campaign began to surface last month, mainly on conservative blogs. [Beginning of fifth graf]

Translation: How about under $300 for KAPLANCORP next month?

Posted 11:09 AM by Gene

Interesting that in PaperofRe-CORD.com are two oddly complementary stories next door to each other in the Arts listings: the first about the fading tradition of New York cabaret, the second of an astonishing project that has unearthed the sounds of nineteenth-century classical musicians. In any other ages these would be a sideshow, but that these are lead cultural stories says where our culture is. Pop music is dead, and classical music is nearly dead, and one may as well say I'm not feeling so well myself.

Posted 8:01 PM by Gene

Daimler, the company that bought Chrysler for $36 billion and whose worth on its books is now zero, is shutting production for a month, which would seem to reveal this crisis may go on a little while longer.

(Via SeekingAlpha)

Posted 7:58 PM by Gene

JonBoy and the head of the CFR issue some soothing talk to The Lord about how He should be multilateralist and bipartisan and blahblahblah. Fine. But let's see if multilateralism gets us any further with Iran and the Palestinians. And let's see if bipartisanship ends when The Lord fulfills a campaign promise.

Posted 7:41 PM by Gene

I thought Hummers were an outrage even before this sudden fad to be frugal -- but then I didn't buy a McMansion either.

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

Even The Paper of Re-CORD must admit one-party control may not be an unalloyed good.

If the Democrats can temper their thirst for revenge and remember that at least a few of us didn't vote for their party, they could do well. If not -- let the comedy begin!

Posted 4:10 PM by Gene

Democrats Carrying Anti-Abortion Banner Put More Congressional Races in Play

You're the Lord God PINCH. Do you smile or frown?

We shall see when these stalwarts have to vote for something.

Posted 4:00 PM by Gene

The TWXSTERS' cable news Web sites get curiouser and curiouser, judging from their leads:

Palin's 'going rogue,' McCain aide says [DOMESTIC site lead]

Briton, South African shot dead in Kabul shooting [INTERNATIONAL site lead with yellow "DEVELOPING STORY" banner]

And the ROGUE story doesn't appear in the top International stories list yet. This proves two things: 1. American news hacks are trying to swing (to put it politely) the election; and 2. What is supposedly important to American Web surfers may not be important to the international kind...or at all.

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

The Dalai Lamas of Mountain View buy a fighter jet and no one complains?

Posted 12:07 PM by Gene

And elsewhere in the State Press, a curious juxtaposition from GREG's home page:

SATURDAY ENDORSEMENTS Updated: Obama Picks in Hartford, Charlotte, St. Pete -- Cincy Goes for McCain

Official: 40% of 'Star-Ledger' Newsroom Exiting

Remember, GREG: it's THE DO-NOT-CALL LAW.

P. S. The combined market cap of NYT, GCI, MNI, AHC and SSP is $4.81 BILLION. Remember THAT when you gloat the day after ELECTION DAY.

Incredibly, GOOG is STILL worth about as much as DIS, TWX, NWS, VIA and CBS combined, and they're worth $114.93 BILLION, which suggests what the former Wizard of Oz called "froth" -- at both ends.

Posted 10:46 AM by Gene

The WaPo's ombudspoop tries unknotting several pretzels:

Photo errors can be worse than word errors because they stand out so much. The Post had two bad photo errors last week -- one a real howler. In Monday's Reliable Source, Amy Argetsinger wrote an account of the annual National Italian American Foundation gala. Post photographer Richard A. Lipski took the gala photos, as he had in 2006.

One of the photos in the layout was of actors Mel Brooks and Alan Alda and of Jack Valenti, former chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. Valenti died April 26, 2007. Several readers, including ABC-TV newsman Sam Donaldson, asked how such a mistake could happen since Valenti was so well known inside the Beltway.

Here's how: A layout editor looking for the pictures in The Post's photo database picked three pictures and didn't notice that one was two years old. A copy editor wrote the caption, also failing to notice the date, and a copy desk supervisor failed to check the information on the printout of the photo. A proofreader failed to question whether Valenti was alive. One supervisor, upon seeing the page later, expressed surprise that Valenti was alive, but assumed the photo proved his suspicion wrong.

Argetsinger said: "I'm absolutely sick about this. Obviously it was a terrible, terrible mistake -- one that jumped out at me the moment I saw the paper." Besides the fact that Valenti is dead, there was another clue -- Alda and Brooks were not mentioned in the story either.

That's bad enough; it brings DR. EVIL back from the dead. But then it gets worse:

A story about a close election in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District, in which state Rep. Eric Paulsen (R) is a candidate, included a photo meant to be of Paulsen. It actually showed Alabama state Rep. Jay Love (R). The Post used a Getty Images photo with an incorrect caption. The only way to have caught the error would have been to check the picture against a photo of Paulsen in a legislative directory; such a mistake is so rare that no one thought to do so.

That was bad enough, but the photo of the Democratic candidate, Ashwin Madia, was about 10 times bigger than the picture of the Republican. Since the story focused on Madia as an unknown in a heavily Republican district, it made sense that he have a somewhat bigger picture. But it looked lopsided.

The correction included a photo of Paulsen -- so small it's called a thumbnail. Such disparity feeds criticism that The Post is biased toward Democrats.

[END OF ARTICLE]

Well, let's put it this way, ombudspoop: WPO hit another new twelve-year low yesterday (it came back, unfortunately). Have you ever thought of shorting the stock?

P. S. And because over HALF of WaPoCo's revenues now come from TEACHING THE SATs and the like this means for all practical purposes its media operations are worth close to ZERO -- an outcome richly deserved.

By the way, we will no longer refer to WaPoCo; we will refer to KAPLANCORP -- and we are sorely tempted to call its diminishing "flagship" THE DAILY KAPLAN.

Posted 10:38 AM by Gene

The especially awful murder of Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother raises a question: if she had been an ordinary person would this have been another NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! moment?

Posted 6:29 PM by Gene

The next Fred Thompson? The defender of the working man and the pretty face should not take that one lying down!

It might muss your looks.

Posted 6:24 PM by Gene

White supremacists committing this heinous murder of a black man is the very definition of obscenity. In time however, the hacks will rub their hands, and an obscenity becomes just another sermon from the press molehill.

We are, alas, waiting.

Posted 6:16 PM by Gene

When the home of Anonymous says sports may be slumping it acts on your brain like the cover of Sports Illustrated. Some maniacs with dough must pull the greedmeisters out of the fire. That said, they deserve it almost as much as top executives at AIG. More so -- they took our tax money to the bank.

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

I think we get the message, Paramount Pete. Clint makes movies for himself -- not for an audience. Once upon a time that might have been a virtue, but in today's hollowed-out culture it's just another way of playing with yourself. He's always making the sort of well-CRAFTED downers (with a very definite accent on CRAFTED) you scream are chasing people away from fillum, and he's always winning Os-CARS® and new friends among the thumbs-up brigade. Turned toward his ever-loving, never-critical muse he's turned his back so insistently to the audience and as intransigently as Miles Davis did Clint has become a platinum-plated superstar irrelevance.

And possibly -- just possibly -- even the ad-blurbists are starting to catch on.

P. S. at 6:28 p. m. And that was before we saw this one.

Even David "From the Arthouse to the Porno House" Denby didn't quite like it.

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Yes, any jamboree where David Gurgle partied was pretty irresponsible.

Posted 5:04 PM by Gene

This is good news: we're saving money on gasoline.

This is bad news: It means our economy's in the toilet.

This is good news: more people are riding on mass transit.

This is bad news: because government's getting less gas taxes it may not afford it.

This is good news: Fewer miles guzzled means cleaner air.

This is bad news: That's because the economy's in the toilet.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

Let's have a contest: Which will be the first of the recorded-noise makers to go the way of eight-track?

Posted 3:33 PM by Gene

Could be might be possibly maybe CHEAP CHANNEL could be might be possibly maybe adding audience by discovering digital gimmicks, which could be might be possibly maybe won't help CHEAP CHANNEL pay down its enormous Chapter XI-beckoning DEBT.

P. S. Entercom at 75 CENTS. Emmis at 60 CENTS. And CITADEL, Drunken Slob's unearther, at 27 CENTS.

It's a GOOD THING you went private, LOUSY!

Posted 3:04 PM by Gene

A STERLING ACHIEVEMENT FOR SELIGISM: The second game of its Festival drew FEWER fans than the FIRST!

Posted 2:59 PM by Gene

Re: Assaulted volunteer story [Mark Steyn]

Jonah, the young lady has now confessed to making up the story and is facing charges.

As Talleyrand would say, this is worse than a crime; it's a mistake. This McCain volunteer's fake hate crime will get more coverage than a real assault would have.

Congratulations to Michelle Malkin, whose instinct for these things is very impressive. I regret that I was among those (on the radio yesterday, having not seen the dubious pictures) who took the story at, so to speak, face value.

10/24 02:45 PM

1. What of your boss PILLHEAD? 2. She has that kind of instinct?

Posted 10:40 AM by Gene

1. HERSELF. 2. THE LORD!!!!!

Well, 1. isn't so new but she does have a way of renewing herself.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

Great: Another shotgun banking wedding.

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

Oooooooooooooooooops! The Paper of Re-CORD admits ACORN was boasting?!?!?

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

Elsewhere in Forbeslist.com, an investor named Ralph Shive opines:

In your spare time, you're an avid reader. One of your all-time favorites is Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips[*]. How come?

I love history. I try to understand cycles, which help me envision where we are now and where we might be going. That book was a great recap of the rise and fall of great nations. The United States is a great nation. We are, in my opinion, peaking and preparing for decay. We have already been decaying.

I found the book fascinating. He pointed out that, in peaking nations, we turn into paper shufflers. Young and hungry countries are mercantilists. They create and sell. But peaking nations shuffle paper. That's what we do here now in America. We shuffle Collateralized Debt Obligations and credit default swaps all over the globe. And this is what it gets us, this mess.

We will not guess whether we're declining (though our culture certainly is) but undoubtedly America has reached a new high in paper shuffling.

*The faux-conservative.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

"You know what Lehman was doing with that money? They were funding their operations. They weren't buying securities and protecting it with some kind of hedge. They're borrowing money from their clients."

TRANSLATION: Lehman engaged in a Ponzi scheme.

It is fashionable to squinch and ask whether the Feds should have saved Lehman. Perhaps there was nothing to save.

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

Another brilliantly timed bit of thinking from Forbeslist.com:

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.
--Sophocles

As we can see in yet another quick decision to throw stocks out the window.

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

It's not over.

Why did Peggy BS's sudden two-faced multiple-sided off-mike "it's over" win her fans?

By the way, BS, you write for a conservative liberal rag owned by a liberal conservative conservative moderate liberal conservative -- WHATEVER. Your two-faced character fits in well.

(Via The Daily Beast. Much as we hate to admit to it TINA!!!!! has come up with something.)

Posted 8:32 AM by Gene

Jeez, another Branson East theme park's closing: the one about youth sex that was supposed to change the theme park forever and ever -- and changed it for all of about 25 months, to barely above half-capacity.

P. S.

"We are in a very, very serious situation," says veteran producer James B. Freydberg.

That's because you very, very seriously run nothing but theme parks.

Posted 1:15 AM by Gene

You don't have to tell us PINCH, Republicans are NAZIS.

Meantime how's Your junk-bond-rated EMPIRE doing?

Posted 12:57 AM by Gene

The heart of wisdom -- from a comedian:

"Everybody talks about politicians - I don't do it because I do comedy already," he said, declining to comment on either Barack Obama or John McCain. "There's nothing fun about it."

May you perform for another 82 years, Jerry Lewis.

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

No, we're not going to become Japan. But there still remains the danger that U.S. regulators will overreach, forgetting that in the decades preceding the subprime disaster America's free-wheeling financiers provided boom after boom, underwriting the country's ravenous but growth-promoting consumption habits. In Washington, the temptation will be to reverse the Big Bang and, like its cosmic counterpart, let it crash in upon itself, turning New York into a black hole of lending inactivity. We could face an outcome analogous to what happened to the CIA after the Church commission hearings of the '70s, which exposed agency abuses but made it so risk averse that it proved fatally incapable of taking on Al Qaeda later. Let's hope that instead reason prevails this time, and the pendulum does not swing too far to the left.

In ZEITGEIST?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: KOLLEDGES (and how can we not doubt this is the only one) are starting to raid their endowments, meaning the time has come to fire a few of their aging hippies, Vince Lombardis and Bunsen Honeydews.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

That the Big Double-A Scribble can waste so much time on this dubious PR "poll" and the morons trying to manipulate it means half the people chicken-scratching about this election should really see a doctor. NOW.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

``We have to do our best but not expect infallibility or omniscience."

Which did not keep The Wizard of Oz from being infallible and omniscient.

``If we are right 60 percent of the time in forecasting, we are doing exceptionally well; that means we are wrong 40 percent of the time,'' Greenspan said.

That's still a winning percentage -- is it not, Wiz?

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

AN HONORARY THIRD TERM FOR THE HONORARY MAYOR!

Now the people, in increasing scorn, should try to send him to a very rich honorary RETIREMENT.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

To the man who had to invent the phrase "Get a life":

GET A LIFE!

Posted 2:45 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Paramount Pete thinks not enough movees are getting enough awards!

Obviously Variety benefits richly from the awards season....

The understatement of the...awards season.

Posted 12:00 PM by Gene

Redstone Won't Sell Viacom, CBS

Even if He has to?

Posted 11:33 AM by Gene

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING FLASH!!!!!

PEJ Survey: Voters Convinced Media Supports Obama

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

We do not feel the least sorry for Mr. THUMBS® having to retract his own review because he saw only the first eight minutes of a masterpiece. We note that for decades THUMBS® was putting his seal of PR approval of all manner of direct-to-video goodies, no doubt having to skim through hundreds of masterpieces to do so, all so he and his fellow THUMBS® could make their millions. Roger, for all his occasionally good writing -- and given his propensity to praise he makes it as occasional as possible -- now proves he can be no more trusted than PETER TRAVERS, or Mr. AIN'T-IT-COOL-NEWS. But then we never really trusted him, so it's no loss for us.

(Caveat: from The Mogul's Friend)

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

Greenspan says credit crisis is 'once-in-a-century credit' tsunami [SIC]

He should know: he helped churn the waves.

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Having just been spun by Joe CONason Jr. I have concluded SPINNING IS LYING. There is no way around it. Spinning is the smiley face on a frown, the right-turn sign on a left-turn sign. It is up as down, in as out, full as empty. Any pundit who spins should have a big fat letter S branded on his forehead.

Posted 8:32 AM by Gene

How much money has the auto biz wasted on NASCAR and THE GOLFING MACHINE?

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

Anonymous is reinventing his Slick lovey-dovey act.

When's the next novel, Anon?

Posted 7:30 PM by Gene

A lot of marketing types have figured how they'll survive the economy: tack the word "consultant" onto their names and get their buzzwords quoted in ADAGE.

Posted 7:09 PM by Gene

A Standard & Poor’s spokesman said lawmakers exaggerated the percentage of mortgage-backed securities that had to be downgraded and noted that none of the $855 billion worth of AAA subprime mortgage-backed securities that it graded over 2005-2007 had gone into default.

Well! That makes me hap-PY!

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Republicans eye Palin for 2012 presidential campaign

1. Make it two in a row! 2. The GRAWF quotes A "leading conservative", so we can be sure it doesn't know what it's talking about -- which never stopped news hacks.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING FLASH!!!!!

Study: McCain coverage mostly negative

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Courtney Sale Ross' Glorious 740 Park Duplex Very, Very, Very Quietly Asking 'Over $60 Million'

Our Manhattan superiors can still dream -- can't they?

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

Student Debt Rose Faster Than Starting Salaries for Last Year's Graduates, Report Says

Which, along with the burgeoning problem with endowments, raises the question: How long can HYER LURNING be a growth industry?

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Look at this chart. The last World Series to score the magical 30 rating was in 1981. That was the year of the disastrous mid-season strike, which took a solid chunk of fans out of the game. The Great Migration to cable soon followed, and it hasn't revived since; the last decent numbers -- and the last decent Series -- came in '91, and thanks to TED. And for all of Selig's idiotic talk the decline has grown steeper. Pundits are much anticipating that this year's Seligism festival will score all-time-low ratings. We would not bet on that, but this chart gives a classic look at what happens to a sports league when it decides it can do without most of its fans.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

IF Boobs McKeating wins, could the time come the hard core might wish he hadn't?

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

We don't know why Sandy "Mozilo" Dodd should be worried; he can wait out the election or the Senate "Ethics" Committee issues a whitewash. Either way he can run for eight or nine more terms.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

What would Oprah do....in an Obama cabinet?

Tough call -- unless The Lord divorces His wife, then we'd have a God and a Goddess -- as if we didn't already.

PREDICTION: She won't take the demotion, but that won't stop Him, Her or Them from pontificating.

Posted 5:04 PM by Gene

Who wants to bet Mickey D, thinking itself invincible, socks it to the Dollar Menu and aims a richly deserved cloud of Kryptonite its way?

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Amazon.com Lowers Annual Forecast; Shares Plunge

It can't be me.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

If the banks are having such dire trouble lending money why do I keep getting unneeded and unwanted credit-card advance checks?

Posted 3:00 PM by Gene

The bad news -- in the hed:

Wachovia takes huge write-down ahead of Wells deal

The good news -- in the subhed:

Goodwill impairment of $18.8 bln may mean fewer losses in future for Wells

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

Posted 2:58 PM by Gene

New WSJ/NBC poll puts Obama ahead by 10

AP poll: Candidates running nearly even

POLLING IMBECILES!

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

Newt's former spokespoop Tony, who has occasionally been very dense, gets at the heart of what ails modern conservatism -- by channeling FDR:

"Let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says: 'Of course we believe all these things. We believe in Social Security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them; we will do more of them; we will do them better; and best of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.'"

Come to think of it -- wasn't that how Dubya worked?

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

Count on SUPERADAM!!!!! to get into an excited nostalgia over punk rock. But while punk got news hacks initially in a state of adjective-scribbling frenzy, let us look around the muck and ashes of pop -- MUSIC and behold what the genius bequeathed us. No, we think we understand why so many people hated Nancy Spungen.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

Could Lamar Alexander be the GOP's future?

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

Add SUMNER to the list of overexposed media biggies who only ever loved themselves, as if we could doubt that.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

Has NASA thought of outsourcing a few missions to India?

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

More from ASSPress Publicity:

"Star Wars" is hyperspeeding to an even longer time ago.

The next chapter in George Lucas' ever-expanding franchise will be "Star Wars: The Old Republic," a massively multiplayer online game set thousands of years before Darth Vader was born.

Maybe if LUKE SPIELBERG hyperspeeds fast enough into the past we won't have to countenance His rotten Buck Rogers remakes again.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

MADONNA’S manic obsession with her body SHATTERED her marriage to Guy Ritchie, the News of the World can reveal.

As their relationship went into meltdown the musclebound singer insisted on sticking to her strict FOUR-HOUR daily exercise regime DESPITE Guy’s pleas they should spend more time together.

It meant the film director went 18 MONTHS without having sex with his wife.

I don't know -- If I'd been Guy I might have been happy.

And on the rare occasions when they did make love, he has told pals it was like “cuddling up to a piece of gristle”.

LIKE I SAID....

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

A whopping 89% of New York City voters say the issue of term limits should be decided by a voter referendum, not an act of the City Council, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday. Half of respondents said they oppose extending the eight-year term limit currently in place to 12 years for the purposes of allowing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for a third term, and 52% said they would vote against extending term limits in a referendum.

Honorary Three-Term Mayor Mike says: LET THEM EAT BALLOTS!

P. S. I just typed Bloomberg in Twitter search and got ten Bloomberg.com links. So much for the people.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Whenever Wired spots a trend my first instinct is to guess why not. I'd say most bloggers have been drowned out by the sameness of their own voices. Writing 3,000-word posts should never have cut it. And text messaging as blogging (that's what Twitter is) won't cut it for long either; it's even more CW prone than BIGMEDIA. I'd wish the world went back to newspapers but then I remember the sieg heil; all told, however, that mightn't be bad.

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Media sweats over exit poll accuracy

It shouldn't; it's BIGMEDIA's job to get polls wrong.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

And why is it a "catastrophe" for so many unneeded car dealers to go out of business? Yes, it hurts their workers, but doesn't having all those dealers add materially to the cost of selling a car? And what good is competition when the competition's spread so thin?

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Are news hacks about to launch another HOMELESS CRISIS that cannot distinguish the person down on his luck from the mentally-ill vagrant? Will they inflate the numbers the way they did when they discovered the topic several decades ago? And will the problem mysteriously vanish when The Messiah takes the throne?

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Fed to Lend Up to $540B to Help Money Market Mutual Funds

Is there anyone we WON'T help?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Anonymous RESPONDS:

Next year, you may find me writing whole columns about McCain's courage on immigration...or some other issue, although I think the verdict of history is in on the guy and I believe his behavior should not be forgotten: he has run a dishonorable campaign. Next year, too, you may find me disagreeing with Obama about this or that. You may want to kick me off your plane.

TRANSLATION: Yes, I was in love with SLICK. FURTHER TRANSLATION: NOT BLOODY LIKELY.

By the way, he says he's "paid to have opinions." But hasn't that been true of most of People Inc.'s organization men since 1923?

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

It seems odd that Kirk Kevor -- Kerkorian is discovering now that he made a bad investment when he should have discovered it when he made the investment.

Or is this what his primary industry would call GAMING?

Posted 9:52 AM by Gene

If there's one rag that ought not to run a "cliché watch", it's The Paper of Re-CORD.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

Boobs McKeating has banned Anonymous from his campaign plane. This is counterproductive. All it does it get Anonymous more excited, and throwing more tantrums in print, and getting him even more in the tank for The Lord, and if there's one thing you don't want it's to make 99.999% media support for The Messiah into 100%.

That said, if we were petty and small-minded, we might ban him from our plane too.

P. S.

UPDATE: Campaign spokesperson Michael Goldfarb responded that "we don't allow Daily Kos diarists on board either."

Them's fightin' words!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

Which reminds us -- what legislaTOR hasn't proved his muscle until he's voted for a law with "serious, unintended consequences"?

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Question: At what point do the Feds decide they can stop jacking up banks -- or do they decide to go all the way because they promised?

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

"At this rate, the question isn't just `Are you better off than you were four years ago?', it's `Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?"' [sic]

Hey but if you go by shorter time frames -- say, four days -- and you believe in Wall Street's fairies the answer can only be yes.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

Usually when teddy bears and candles sprout in the ghetto, so does NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thankfully, not this time.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

There'll always be a SLASHDOT:

Hardware: Oil-Immersion Cooled PCs Goes [SIC!] To Retail

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives are making a thing over Vice-President Kinnock's words. Like so many hack pols he wouldn't know a clear sentence if it hit him on the head with its nouns. We think what Neil meant is that in an unpredictable world, a rogue leader might want to tweak The Messiah, especially early on, but he's up to the challenge, and don't mistake his youth of callowness. Enamored of his copious verbiage, however, and under the guidance of a God who has more than a bit of the nonjudgmental in Him, he almost made it sound as though The Lord might cave under pressure. We can't be sure of course -- we figure Boobs McKeating might think of firing off his six-shooters when threatened -- but that Neil has once again subjected The Lord to a tiny and manageable controversy says something about the state of political oratory, and the state of political egos.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

At what point does all this stimulus become too much stimulus?

Posted 3:15 PM by Gene

Yet another rag admits BIGMEDIA is all but a one-party state.

This is not news to those who must consume it.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

In a very showy way Col.'s boys are saying he had nothing to do with their courageous endorsements. The story of Henry Luce tells us a news tycoon doesn't have to scream in his slaves' ears to be heard. While we are certain Col. didn't TELL the boys to be courageous the fact remains he set up the circumstance that allowed for their courage by running his company off a cliff; if we're going to go down with the ship, they surely reasoned, may as well do it with all guns blazing. We stand by that assessment.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 10:51 AM by Gene

It's a little discouraging to learn The Messiah will apparently bring lots of hacks and retreads into His cabinet. Yes the Dems have been out of the White House for all but eight of the last twenty-eight years but does that mean there's no new talent left? Jack Reed will be a drone at Defense; we can hardly wait for Sen. Hein-TZZZZZZZZZZZZZ to put his foot in his mouth. As for the token Republicans Sen. Moderate and Sen. Hole-in-the-Bagel will likely be given useless jobs at Agriculture and Veterans to disabuse them of their bipartisanship. And how old is Paul Volcker? And after these folks come the true believers, and that's when The Lord gets into trouble.

And why did WaPo bury this on A12?

P. S. 81 on September 5.

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

We are sorry to hear Mr. Blackwell has died. He was very salutary in letting the world know celebrity females often have no taste.

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

And why is it when a guy like former SUPERADAM!!!!! star Jeremy is through with an enduring genius like Leonard Bernstein he makes him sound as appetizing as a plate of cold leftover Brussels sprouts?

Let's hope St. Warren folds the rag before he has a chance to be the next JACK KROLL!

Posted 9:29 AM by Gene

Stephen "QUARTER OF A CENTURY" Holden is decidedly sour on Lerner and Loewe -- although you can't entirely blame him:

[I]t’s a little jolting to realize that a starring role on Broadway is no longer synonymous with stardom in the celebrity sense of the word.

Who needs celebrities with all the roustabouts?

Posted 9:16 AM by Gene

And elsewhere in the ADMINSTRATION of news, a pertinent question:

"Since when do you guys lean right?"

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:11 AM by Gene

Obama: Powell will have a role in adminstration [SIC!!!!!]

Ka-CHING!

And apparently the ASSPress was so excited at this Force of Truth and Justice getting a job that the spelling error appears all throughout the news food chain!

A specially misspelled NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to ASSPRESS!

Posted 6:44 PM by Gene

OPEC Plans to Cut Supply as Oil Prices Head Toward $50 a Barrel

``OPEC is going to try to prevent some of the price decline,'' Francisco Blanch, head of global commodities research at Merrill in London, said in a Bloomberg television interview. ``It's going to be very difficult to stem a price fall.''

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Falling oil prices dent Hugo Chávez's clout

Commodities prices overall are slipping, generating new concern in a region heavily vested in exports of soy, copper, and crude. But it is Chávez who could stand the most to lose: a new report from Deutsche Bank says that Venezuela needs prices to stay at $95 a barrel in order to balance its budget.

Coupled with production declines, Chávez's days as the ultimate benefactor could be coming to a close.

See? Not all the economic news is bad.

Posted 6:37 PM by Gene

And here we thought the election had just about deep-sixed everyone's sense of humor. Happily this does not appear to be so.

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

We haven't paid much thought to Milan Kundera's travails as they may boil down to a game of East-Bloc insider baseball, with jealousy on all sides, a notion that gains validity from the remark that he "writes intellectual pornography for mediocre Western readers", which we would not be surprised to learn has a basis in truth (especially as he inspired a Hollywood arthouse extrusion); and it may be hard to find high-profile figures from that era who didn't collaborate. Nonetheless, if he did, it is a stain, a stain not bleached by the excuse that everybody did it -- or had to do it.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

And on my way back from the not-so-great A I beheld as always this landmark in the sky, and today I couldn't help reflecting what it once stood for: Philadelphia National Bank. In twenty years it's gone through four mergers and four name changes, the first three accompanied by layoffs (and I suspect writedowns): first CoreStates (sic) Financial, then FirstUnion (sic), then Watchoverya; now it's the Federally-pastored shotgun wedding with Wells Fargo. If this bank had stayed local it might not have been better managed; then again had it hewed to local lending and sound, conservative principles it could have been a true public servant, a feather in our civic cap, and very profitable, and no one would talk about new lows, or RUNS. Walkoverya had planned to get rid of the letters but now, it appears, they'll stay forever, like the ones on the currently Loews hotel.

I would not wager though that Wells will pay full price to keep a name on the sporting Taj Mahal for rich people. It would show true principle to abandon it to the prima donnas and their losses. Then again, if their execs can find a way to put their feet on the luxury-suite railings maybe they will.

Posted 4:56 PM by Gene

I'm now convinced the big consumer retailers are run by men whose hobby is pulling the wings off flies. Take CVS. I just bought an item for 95 cents. I got back a three-foot-long register tape. Plus at least some of its stores require ID with credit cards, but not debit. To protect the customer, they lie. It's to discourage credit-card use so they can PAY LESS ON FEES.

And lately the several A&Ps where I have to shop for groceries have taken to playing seventies foreground Muzak. I am convinced it's a malevolent inside joke -- especially as the A seems to have gone on a price-hiking spree, perhaps to pay for buying Pathmark. What sort of idiots do they think we are?

Yet there is no changing either company; both live on captive customers.

Posted 2:56 PM by Gene

Speaking of share prices, Jonny works for a company that is down 65 PERCENT from its all-time high; Mark works for a company that is down ALMOST 90 PERCENT. Do they care for share prices? No. Do they care for their fellow employees, especially the ones who don't make their six and seven digits? No. So long as THEY have jobs and so long as THEY are better than their readers, nothing will matter, so they can spin until the whole universe gets whirled up in their vortex.

This is not to say rightists can't spin. We saw that when NRO's effete snobs tried to turn the airhead SARAH!!!!! into a goddess. But this is to say so long as people like Jonny and Mark can talk down to their readers with impunity we should do everything we can to see their employers' share prices get closer to zero, even though Jonny and Mark are likely to be among the LAST to lose their jobs.

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

A golden oldie from 2004:

Will someone tell the BUTTMAN INSTITUTE-DOW 36,000-BARNEY-FAG ARMEY CROWD, the more business practices UNFETTERED CAPITALISM, the more likely it is to BRING ON STATE SOCIALISM and NATIONAL-NANNYISM?

BUTTMAN INSTITUTE, by the way, was my reference to one of a certain Glibertarian think tank's finest supporters.

Posted 1:03 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Indiana, under a putatively Republican governor, is trying a healthy dose of RENDELLISM, with lots of emphasis on HEALTH CARE, and lots of big fat tax givea -- INCENTIVES, but it doesn't seem to be making the people any richer; if anything it's leading to a kind of economic caste system.

[C]reating a single viable biotech company with 10 to 20 employees takes as long as 10 years and as much as $100 million in cash infusions over those years, Eli Lilly start-up specialist Joshua Salisbury estimated.

By that rough measure, replacing the state's 133,400 lost factory jobs with the same number of knowledge workers would require amassing $670 billion to seed 6,700 new tech firms employing 20 workers each.

Is that doable in Indiana?

Well, Dubya helped the investment bankers -- so anything's possible!