Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

UAW wins big Chrysler stake but can't run company

Has the ASSPress accidentally engaged in ESP?

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Shortly after on to Dark Shadows. The imbeciles at Montvale restyled their stores to compete with Whole Foods, meaning dim lighting and all sorts of dark hues and the ceiling painted dark gray. Plus they insist on keeping a few of the lights down to "save energy". No lights at all save energy too, as in alleys. What used to be a tolerable sojourn now gives me the creeps. I complained twice by e-mail to "Great" Atlantic and Pacific and got the usual A & P nothing. Long before the Whole Foods yearning these clowns started playing seventies foreground Muzak. I'm convinced it's a practical joke. Why? The seventies were a time of stagflation. Grocers keep raising their prices. Deflation? Five-ounce tuna cans and three-and-a-half-ounce potato-chip bags say otherwise. So does a chain aping Whole Foods. Even its prices have come down.

And today one of the pieces of doggy doo they played was "Rise" (aka "Music to Rape By"). We all know about Herb Alpert. I have this hunch he's still ashamed of the Brass; and if you ask him I fear he'd say, "'Rise' was one of the few things I ever did that wasn't Muzak." Sorry Herb, it was one of the few things that was. What's more, it's DISCO. Disco was something Bill Veeck burned. (And I learn today from the Wiki wanks that in the UK they played the "song" too fast, and nobody noticed.) I shouldn't be hard on Herb Alpert. At his best he played truly delightful and melodious music, but it disappeared from the radio when the act did because it wasn't ROCK. The recent attempt at a virtual Brass revival failed thusly and also because there's no one to concertize. (Lately Herb did a brief tour as a jazz elder statesman at several clubs and hardly anyone noticed.) One must feel guilty about liking the TJB. I don't.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

I have grown to so despise our superiors it flavors even the most innocent things with an overwhelming bile. Today quite a few dozens of happy young people favoring pot "legalization" marched down South Street. Not a one smoked it. I know why. One of NORML's lobbyists from Washington was no doubt there before hand (and probably not in a T-shirt) to yell, "DON'T -- SMOKE -- POT!" It would have given off an -- aroma. These Beltway cretins know the "stereotype" of Cheech and Chong is not far from the truth; painting pot smoking as a noble medical endeavor is a convenient way of burying it. Why this hasn't become another P-Ulitzer-winning cause celebre for the hacks is beyond me.

Hmmm, 1600 K St., NW. Yes, how expensive are YOUR clothes?

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

Jeb Bush to Help Rebuild GOP

The party needs more thumbs?

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

Judging from BEN's tourist advisory and some of the reactions here Dolly has unleashed a stink bomb on Branson East. The touristas won't know -- heck they don't know imitation theaters and imitation stars, so why should they object to the smell of a stink-bomb musical...that will be a hit anyway with their copious help?

Besides we theatah faithful can always point to this GOLDEN SEASON full of revivals.

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

65,141 LINKS IN GOOGLE NEWS.

IDIOTS!

Posted 11:22 AM by Gene

Obama May Lean Toward Centrist for First U.S. High Court Pick

TRANSLATION: Hey, we're just guessing -- hey maybe we're not even guessing -- but if he's a superliberal like the folks in our biz that's okay by us.

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

One reason I will never put up a blogroll is that (aside from the hopelessness of getting others to link to me) it's a red-light-flashing way of showing you think like someone else. When you scream, "I LINK TO 500 INSTAPUNDITS!" or "I LINK TO 500 MATTHEW YGLESIASES!" it tells the world you can't think for yourself. So many blogrolls link to so many like-minded non-thinkers you wonder that the bloggers don't start to realize it's a dead giveaway to their closed-mindedness.

Posted 6:58 PM by Gene

Gurgle, I'd bet many rock "musicians" have practiced 10,000 hours. That means they can strum a gheetar better. And that athuhletes practice a lot means they're trying their best to be machines. A lot of people at your employ work hard, and they're writers too. That surely makes them geniuses. I know what you're getting at, Gurgle, but was it worth getting there?

Especially since someone wrote about Carnegie Hall before you.

(Via Spectator.org, which got it right in far fewer words)

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

How both (KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!) sides (KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!) think (KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!):

Reading between Rich's lines:

Cato Institute economist Alan Reynolds has examined the data and found that the top 1 percent took disproportionate hits in every recession but one (1981–82) in the postwar period.

...he really says the conservative's bestest friends the hyperrich can take it, meaning he'd obviously like to get the top 1 percent back to where they were before the latest disaster. And if that means taking from the other 99 percent...TRANSLATION: Both the Kudlowites and The One stand for some form of income redistribution. The One might admit to it.

NEXT!

Gordon calls Dullard Souter a "conservative" because he was a liberal. See, he was a judicial conservative, meaning I suppose he respected precedent, but because his outcomes were liberal and this liberal was conserving liberalism we can call him a conservative and put the razz on conservatives. A liberal's a conservative, a conservative's a liberal, war is peace, freedom is slavery -- we can save the last.

I HATE KNEE JERKS!!!!!

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

Another elbow-in-the-side joke from The Daily Kaplan:

RePosted: Souter's Votes May Ease Conservative Anxieties

But it looks as though the STOCK MARKET gets the LAST LAUGH today:

Washington Post swings to loss on charges, ad declines

Down 60. OUCH!

Posted 10:32 AM by Gene

The question is: Will Chrysler go from making gas guzzlers no one wants to making eeny-weeny-teeny-tiny PC cars no one wants?

If so, prepare the money bonfire.

Posted 9:18 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: RENDELLISM hits the labor market, with jobs for ordinary Joes disappearing and new ones popping up in those fields the EDDIES have been self-servingly touting for years (EHDYUKAYSHUN, health care) that the Joes have no skills for. The solution of course is to throw zillions into "training" -- or see if we can get back at least a few jobs for the Joes of the world (but NOT in construction, please).

And EHDYUKAYSHUN and health care will never make up more than a fraction of the jobs the Joes lost, whatever the EDDIES eruct.

Well, there's ALWAYS India.

Posted 9:12 AM by Gene

Good news: The TV tycoons are getting less from slavish, obsessive advertisers like Moon 'n' Stars.

The bad news: Because its money goes farther, Moon 'n' Stars can plaster more ads on the tube -- meaning its fealty to junk television is greater than ever, and will likely persist once the biz comes back, with its help.

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

SLIME is inflicting surfers of DAPOST.com with successive pop-ups that stay glued on the screen and won't disappear no matter how many hundreds of times you click the X in the red box. ANOTHER MORON.

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

Mogul's Friend becomes the ANTI-KEN FELATTA!

Courageous!

(Via Henry "Honest!" Blodget's site)

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Already con-SER-va-tives are shaking:

[I]n coming years, Souter’s replacement may well provide the fifth vote for:

— the imposition of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;

— stripping “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance and completely secularizing the public square;

— the continued abolition of the death penalty on the installment plan;

— selectively importing into the Court’s interpretation of the American Constitution the favored policies of Europe’s leftist elites;

— further judicial micromanagement of the government’s war powers; and

— the invention of a constitutional right to human cloning.

Not bloody likely. Why? I don't call Them the Nine Fingers for nothing. They can feel a hurricane. And yes, while the Fingers don't give a finger for the public, They don't want to see a mob on Their brightly polished steps. It's messy.

Besides, the Fingers can devise ways of being stupid without being ideological.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

Thank you, Jenni-FER, for coining a phrase: Anything that happens in New Jersey is "New Jersery."

Or should we say New Jersery in the New Jersery.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The hacks have to put dear, sweet, adorable friends like Veep Throttlebottom in the attic because they live there.

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

62,313 LINKS IN GOOGLE NEWS.

No wonder The Paper of Re-CORD and The Daily Kaplan were forty minutes late last night.

MORONS.

Posted 8:09 AM by Gene

I should have known, of course, that the hacks would be daydreaming; but they've been daydreaming since election day. Indeed they always daydream as their chief purpose is writing fiction.

(Link via Politico.com, which would not know an outside voice if it screamed in its ear with the amplification of ten rock concerts)

Posted 7:29 PM by Gene

Oh well, back to making fun of ARCHdaily:



The biggest clamshell ever made -- OR...

Barbarella's tube!

Posted 7:28 PM by Gene

And pray tell on what planet would ZONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN deserve a bonus?

Posted 7:22 PM by Gene

On the plus side, though, The Kap has run an editorial on Veep Throttlebottom's mouth.

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

Some of the most highly partisan and irritating news-hack propaganda centers around public-opinion "polls." This press release merely repeats the canard that the Republican Party is dead, which in turn is but a covert expression of the news biz' glee, and the contempt for conservatives that The Daily Kaplan famously expressed in its poor-uneducated-easy-to-command gag. Give me the day of the party rags, of Horace Greeley and The Log Cabin, of papers that called themselves the Democrat and the Republican for a purpose, when news hacks lied, lied boldly and honestly, and didn't give a damn about it.

Posted 7:01 PM by Gene

The greedmeisters of professional sport still think their athuhletes' names are private property.

For once we endorse an action of SUMNER'S.

Posted 6:59 PM by Gene

The dullard Papa stealthily finagled onto the Nine Fingers so he wouldn't be BORKED is hint-hinting he may retire -- or maybe not.

Unfortunately for The One, the guy's a left-leaning Finger.

P. S. at 10:06 p. m. GE BANCORP NETWORK NEWS makes it official: he's leaving. (No link)

P. P. S. at 10:12 p. m. National Public NewsTalk Radio says so too.

P. P. P. S. at 10:16 p. m. Nobody noticed the ASSPress story, and nobody notices this. Here's a big political news story and no one notices. I suppose the hacks are still trailing BO, or congratulating themselves on Sen. O'Specter, or still counting the HUNDRED DAYS.

And since no one notices we will jump ahead of overrated sites like the VOLOKHHEADS, who would be over this in the proverbial New York minute, and speculate The One chooses from left field, in both ways.

MESS link at 10:23 p. m.

P. P. P. P. S. We didn't notice -- Nina Totenberg reported it for NPNTR. They must have shared a few commiserations. (We learned that because it's up on WIKI, the World's News Leader. Pfffffffffffffffft!)

Posted 10:47 AM by Gene

A THREAT:

New 'USA Today' Editor: Seek to 'Innovate Like Hell'

This means -- MORE HUGE front-page sports blurbs, MORE HEAD-BANGING front-page show-biz advertorials, MORE gimmicks with advertisers to goose sales. (And MORE stories about the First Family's dinner preferences, it goes without saying -- although we may throw in an occasional INVESTIGATIVE REPORT about REPUBLICANS.) It does NOT mean a better paper -- as if that were possible with USAOKAY!!!!!

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

Now if our STATE MEDIA continue with their old tricks they will treat Veep Throttlebottom as a daft but lovable uncle and hide him in the attic. We don't want to ruin the prospects for a greater president than FDR, after all.

And we have not heeded this CRISIS!!!!! because we rather suspected we'd hear something like this, though it pays to keep your fingers crossed.

Posted 9:11 AM by Gene

Great: Chrysler will suck off the government's teat even in bankruptcy.

WHY will stocks go up a thousand points today?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Geithner "Most Beautiful" Scandal: Tim's Brother Is A 'People' Mag VP! [SIC!]

Spinning off PEOPLE INC. would be too good for it.

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

Remembering the L.A. riots of 1992:
Where were you?

I think we know where you hacks were: lazing in your luxury news suites, giddy at the death and destruction, waiting to lay a guilt trip on -- PEOPLE WHOSE RACE WAS MOSTLY YOURS.

Why today, PVT. ZELL? Or is this in honor of the decimation of your Baltimore newsroom? Remember PVT. -- THE DO-NOT-CALL LAW.

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

59,619 LINKS!!!!! in GOOGLE NEWS.

ENOUGH!

Posted 8:22 PM by Gene

Okay -- here's a good one from ARCHDaily -- an Austrian warehouse. I don't know if the overhang serves a useful function but it could. Such design would never happen here -- the bean counters would be all over it before you could say "award-winning". But it is a nice departure from the usual industrial slabs.

See? We don't mindlessly dump on modern architecture!

(A better picture here -- but it's 1100 x 1100. We repeat: not bad!)

Posted 7:56 PM by Gene

55,013 LINKS IN GOOGLE NEWS.

Posted 7:41 PM by Gene

Oh and SLIME! SUMNER's called You out! He says He'll live forever!

Challenge Him to a DUEL, SLIME!

Posted 7:37 PM by Gene

Two months ago, the child star of the hit movie "Slumdog Millionaire" was worrying about what to wear to the Oscars. Now she has come home to a very different problem: How to get the fetid water out of her family's one-room shack....

Eight Oscars and $326 million in box office receipts have so far done little to improve the lives of the film's two impoverished child stars.

SLIME! WHERE'S THE MONEY?

Posted 7:34 PM by Gene

New Dem Specter Votes No On Obama's Budget

No wonder his ene -- friends are annoyed.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

In November, Huntsman won re-election with 78 percent of the vote in Utah, one of the most solidly Republican states in the country and one of the most conservative, but he is an unconventional Republican, staking out moderate positions on environmental issues like climate change and favoring gay rights.

What makes this exasperating is that the only Republicans the hacks will praise are those who think like them (as if we need be reminded) -- and politicians approved by news hacks may not necessarily be Republicans. It is also possible when he runs for president he may have to do things that will shut off the news-hack faucets of praise. Anyone for Boobs McKeating II?

Oh, and anyone here remember Pete Wilson?

P. S. It's time for our free, fearless and independent STATE MEDIA to start saying "YAHOOS" in code words.

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

As President Obama deploys his many czars and task forces, he should remember that no amount of IQ can cure the human condition. Like Republicans, Democrats are prone to overemphasize their favorite facts and theories, to gloss over contradictory data, to skew their analysis to match their values. That doesn't make them dumb people or bad people. It just makes them people.

In -- PEOPLE NEWSRAG?!?

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

One of the hacks' biggest enterprises (aside from pure political propaganda and show-biz advertising) is wishful thinking. We can hope Vlad's puppet breaks out on his own, but we mustn't forget he didn't get to his current job by being him.

Posted 12:22 PM by Gene

GREG, I think tonight there's a good chance KEITH ZERO will remind the world of PILLHEAD'S TAXES.

Posted 12:04 PM by Gene

TEN...
NINE...
EIGHT...
SEVEN...
SIX...
FIVE...
FOUR...
THREE...
TWO...
ONE...




HAPPY OBAMA HUNDREDTH DAY!!!!!!!!!!

AND REMEMBER:



Big Brother is watching you.

P. S. at 12:24 p. m. 48,001 LINKS IN GOOGLE NEWS.

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

Jeff Bew-KES, I just saw all those empty-calorie Web sites your AOL shame runs. Really it seems to be doing a better job of insulting the public than PEOPLE INC. PLUS it's launched POLITICO II! Jeff, KEEP AOL! It's THE PERFECT PEOPLE WARNER UNIT!

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

But thank God there are no-think zones at TNR: Dr. David Brinkleyson says The Big O IS better than FDR!

And he IS a perfesser, so it should come naturally.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Jonathan tells more of the truth than he may have intended:

You need some kind of public conceit to maintain the appearance of principle. It's going to be much harder for Specter to pull this off than people think. Political elites are underrating the difficulty of the task because they've assimilated the phoniness and moral trade-offs in politics to a degree that the general public hasn't. [Emphasis added]

TRANSLATION: Our superiors (and that includes BIGMEDIA types) are moral lepers.

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

See, if it weren't for BIGMEDIA'S AUTHORITARIAN way of doing things, and the fact that it rules over America more than mere mortals, and in so many ways claims its favorites as glorified puppets, maybe we'd really like the president.

I mean, he seems in an ordinary one-to-one way like a really really good guy. But because the hacks have already put his mug on Mt. Rushmore does not help anybody. And dammit haven't they ever heard the one Fred Astaire line he didn't include in his inaugural? And an awful letdown may hurt more than his reelection bid.

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

See, I guess stocks are going up because the Wall Street Casino figures if the economy contracts long enough, that'll bring on a REAL bull market!

Or maybe because 6.1 percent isn't as bad as 6.3 percent it's "above expectations".

Posted 8:18 AM by Gene

You know how a light bulb can sputter if it isn't fully secure in the socket? Richard Cohen's column is like that. Today it sputters ON:

America should repudiate torture not because it is always ineffective -- nothing is always anything -- or because others loathe it but because it degrades us and runs counter to our national values. It is a statement of principle, somewhat similar to why we do not tap all phones or stop and frisk everyone under the age of 28. Those measures would certainly reduce crime, but they are abhorrent to us.

But it is important to understand that abolishing torture will not make us safer. Terrorists do not give a damn about our morality, our moral authority or what one columnist called "our moral compass." George Bush was certainly disliked in much of the world, but the Sept. 11 attacks were planned while Bill Clinton was in office, and he offended no one with the possible exception of the Christian right. Indeed, he went around the world apologizing for America's misdeeds -- slavery, in particular. No terrorist turned back as a result.

It sputters off toward the end when Dick gingerly compares Dubya to the NAZIS, but we'll take our light from the press in whatever tiny quantities we can.

Posted 9:23 PM by Gene

For the past several weeks or so ARCHDaily.com had actually posted pictures of halfway decent buildings. Well, THAT couldn't last, and lately it's found its old groove again, so....



The world's biggest high-tech splashproof urinal;



And for the women the world's biggest...er....



The worst Christmas-wrapping job in history;



What color would that be? If it's the color we think they could be speckled factory-reject Goobers.

Posted 7:31 PM by Gene

Don't call this BUD's nightmare; call it His DREAM -- a dream of so many zillionaires and taxpayers financing SELIGISM He'd need no fans.

Oh, it's too early for baseball, He'll say. Perhaps; but it's never too early to lose money.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

Mousy Mick, again:

Brown also buries the lede in her last sentence, hinting at the possible closure of ... The New Yorker. ... But what would she know about The New Yorker. ... [Link added]

We can dream, can't we?

P. S. Tina's last two sentences:

When Si Newhouse bought The New Yorker, though, he took upon himself the responsibility for an institution that is part of the nation’s cerebral cortex. Let’s hope this pitiless economy doesn’t force him to cap his noble career by performing a lobotomy.

If he does, you and Dr. Remnick were in the operating room first. (Sasha was one of the orderlies.)

Posted 6:24 PM by Gene

News hacks are so happy today they needn't think about what their happiness will do to the nation. The auto makers have become an eyeball-glazing sewer-stenchy mess, something beyond even the GENIUS of LEGENDARY WELCH to make right (pfffffffffffffffft!), and yet a few people are a little bit aghast at The One and his industrial policy. So long as we have our sixty senators, everything's coming up roses.

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

PILLHEAD TAKES MORE CREDIT!

"While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation. Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats." SENATOR SPECTER, THAT WAS OPERATION CHAOS! A LARGE PART OF THAT WAS JUST A GAME!! A LARGE PART OF THAT WAS A TRICK!!! IT WAS OPERATION CHAOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Chaotic overemphasis added]

Indeed it was such a successful trick that all 200,000-plus came ROARING BACK to WIN THE STATE FOR BOOBS McKEATING!!!!!

I'm thinking a seven-letter Yiddishism that rhymes with BUCK.

(Corrected at 7:01 p. m.; I thought PILLHEAD won the election for SEN. DENNIS DAY, but that was in 2006.)

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Given the sense of elation that surely washed over America's luxury news suites today I have yet to read a single piece defending one-party rule. Perhaps they are embarrassed to defend it; it would make them look like stooges for tyrannies, never mind if you're happy you live in an enlightened tyranny. Surely one could (if one tried) make a reasoned, logical case for it -- although possibly the best one could do is "it will make the trains run on time." (Like Mussolini.) But the Republicans merely made their one-party state bigger and more fraudulent, and the Dems will make theirs bigger and more fraudulent still. With an outcome so supremely advantageous to hacks it speaks to their utter cowardice that they cannot endorse their animal vanity. It will not do to liken them to tobacco companies or fast-food chains; the hacks, after all, have told us for decades they're better than that. So they will gloat in private, and evade stares in public, and rule our world as usual.

P. S. Perhaps it is melodramatic to speak of one-party rule; but in modern media's use democracy is a code word for total control.

Posted 2:44 PM by Gene

SNAP ANALYSIS [SIC!]: Specter defection a sharp blow to Republicans

This is the opposite side of GRIM MILESTONE. TRANSLATION: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!! OUR TEAM WINS!!!!!!!!!!

Hacks think they do themselves a favor with such varied forms of cheerleading. They may not even do a favor for their friends, who could in time be disappointed. (BIG CAVEAT: A ghost for DUBYA.)

MNI AT FIFTY-FOUR-POINT-TWO CENTS further suggests it.

Posted 12:35 PM by Gene

We would only note that the other courageous Republican party switchers, Sen. Jeffords and Sen. Caspar Milquetoast, left office (voluntarily or not) not long after their switches. We would do well to remember it works both ways, too -- look at Sen. Morals, or the damfool Phil Gramm, whose party switching plays no small part in his aura as a conniver.

The hacks must be having impromptu champagne celebrations. (Well, ginger ale, anyway.) Whether one-party rule works so well for the people we will soon enough learn.

Posted 12:29 PM by Gene

Here is excellent news -- business is taking on...more debt? Either people think we're going to have a rip-roaring economy or that the government can take it off their books.

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 11:37 AM by Gene

More snazzy ASSPress reporting: In a story on the demise of Pontiac it links to a Web site that apparently was last updated in July of 2007.

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

Just what we need from the TWXSTERS -- ANOTHER outlet for political CW.

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

WME ENTERTAINMENT:
OK, SO WHAT'S NEXT?

WAX, WHO CARES?????????

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

In the week since the hacks saw a profit center in swine flu, how many people have died in drunk-driving accidents worldwide? How many have been diagnosed with lung cancer? How many have contracted AIDS?

Newsmen are IMMORTAL.

(The jackass Howie Hairshirt via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

The SAINT behind the curtain seems to love financial time bombs. If he knows everything why didn't he know enough to avoid toxic investments?

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

Never mind that it's fortified with a zillion vitamins -- does this corn taste any good?



There's the last question that would occur to Bunsen Honeydews.

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

Meantime his bosses, continuing to run stories by experts, may sell WQXR, which would be a sad thing -- and we know what kind of philistines write for papers when SLIME gets excited because ESPNCORP may want the property for its FRED FLINTSTONES. SLIME -- have you laid off anybody lately?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

THE ORIGINAL TVNEWSER becomes a TORTURE EXPERT!

Posted 7:33 PM by Gene

You don't suppose Coke and Pepsi are having a tough time because the manufacturers have raised their prices...because Coke and Pepsi are full of CORN SYRUP...which is full of CORN...which our GUVMENT insists on turning into ETHANOL?

Posted 3:01 PM by Gene

Pakistan's president says Elvis is dead to get us off his back. There's just one problem; no one's seen him alive lately.

Posted 2:59 PM by Gene

We've been waiting for The One's interns to get him into trouble; he hasn't because trouble isn't in his true believers THE HACKS' dictionary. This sounds like the work of interns.

Posted 11:33 AM by Gene

Even if THE 140-CHARACTER FAD has staying power it will still be interesting to know how many continue to drive themselves insane rushing back and forth to their computers typing of every time they eat or brush their teeth or go to the bathroom -- but then the fad may take such a hold in their lives they find they can ignore those things and type about imagining themselves eating or brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom. Friends (as PILLHEAD would say), we're becoming a nation of lunatics.

Posted 11:20 AM by Gene

Oh well -- here's one more site to delete from my bookmarks. Portfolio didn't stand a chance -- it was another insider rag in a field crowded with failing ones -- and its Web site was eviscerated not too long ago, but it is never pleasant to find a halfway-decent site only to have to delete it soon after. I should be used to it after all this time on the Web, but it's still a little dispiriting.

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

Here JonBoy runs a necessary story on how the Web caters to ghouls, and right next door to it on the "lightbox" his good little boy Fareed MUST tell us The One is the greatest president ever. Bet: When JonBoy goes 1.2 MILLION his readers see less of the former stories -- and more of the infernal FAREED.

Posted 10:17 AM by Gene

The problem is, guys, Jut-Jaw Jay doesn't look hip.

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

How surprising:

[G]ambling money has never been plentiful enough to prop up the state's education system -- and likely never will. Florida's sales tax-driven general revenue fund is the backbone of education spending, though pro-gambling forces typically leave out that fact when promising to help fund schools.

Making matters worse: State lawmakers, in effect, broke their promise with the lottery. Billed as a way to improve education, the money over time was used to simply replace existing education dollars, with little net gain for schools. That is, the gambling cash supplanted state education money -- it didn't supplement it.

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

The New CW devises another very good excuse for the press to cover the White House as a reality show.

Posted 9:16 AM by Gene

OH oh, even liberals admit Vice-President Throttlebottom may someday say something.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

We should keep in mind, alas, that these four who propose to get us started wiping out nukes in a big way have a combined age of over 317. Too often carting out distinguished elders to battle some scourge or another has a whiff of compromise, in the worst sense. But at least these four can say they have their reputations pretty well intact on the world scene (except Gorby's, which is junk in Russia), and if anyone can rid us of nukes, let's give these old folks a try. We may not have too many others.

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The Lord God Steve has found something He can't run up a 300-percent profit margin on, because then it would look -- obvious.

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

And keep in mind, when political-science perfessers talk about the P. O. P., they're 97-percent liberal, so they have an active rooting interest -- against.

Posted 11:41 AM by Gene

Meantime news hacks internationally are rubbing their hands preparing to create another panic. We would note that thus far 81 have died in Mexico -- compared to the 7,000 shot to death in the drug wars in over a year. That the Mexican government can be so prompt with the face masks and so hopeless elsewhere says something.

Posted 11:23 AM by Gene

Here's a rather bold irony: almost forty years ago (!) the HWWWWALTER CRRRRONKITES got exquisitely giddy as in their preparation for a P-Ulitzer-winning end to AN UNJUST WAR they gleefully reported on a riot that got catastrophically out of control. Last night there was another conflagration at Kent State, at first "marked by drinking and general hanging out on College Avenue" (it figures), and while the stupids made bonfires with mattresses and pulled down street signs and police became testy and fired rubber bullets nobody got hurt, which makes us wonder what would have happened nearly forty years ago if people had known what they were doing.

''The flames were filling the street, like 15 feet high, and kids were throwing furniture on it and hanging from trees and screaming 'KSU' over and over again,'' she said.

Well, at least nothing about pigs.

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

We wish we had thought of this: the idea of TV news hacks covering the First Family as a reality show would be perfect for an industry that gives us the surface of the surface. Arguably they're already doing it so why not go all the way? Of course there'd be a fight a la SLIME vs. the TWXSTERS on Watchmen as to who'd control the vast, juicy profits, but once they solved that with floating emcees (ANDERSON one night, maybe KEITH the next) and everybody sticking those cameras and microphones into everybody's photogenic faces they'd do swell. And the "over-the-air" networks could join in and claim still more time from expensive troublesome scripted shows; their denture-adhesive shillers would make good Ed McMahons too. But as to the notion that "the reporters who accompany him now could stay home and do some real reporting for a change", since so many would be full-time helping run a reality show, who would those be?

And FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NEWS could throw a tantrum at not being invited and get big ratings just yelling at itself. This would be perfect!

Posted 10:33 AM by Gene

The hacks smile while conducting another "poll":

There is a warning sign for the GOP in the new poll: 21 percent of those surveyed said they identify as Republicans, the fewest to do so in a Post-ABC poll in more than 25 years. Last fall, Democrats outnumbered Republicans at the polls by the biggest margin in network exit polls going back to the 1982 midterms. (NINETEENTH OF TWENTY GRAFS)

And how do we know there are so few Republicans? Because they tell us. And how do we know they're telling us right? Well, we try to make our samples accurate. And how do we know they're accurate? Well, we ask other pollsters, and other newsmen, and....

Okay, the P. O. P. is still in the doghouse, and deservedly so. But we again submit public opinion polls are basically a reflection of news hack coverage, and they can be slanted to suit the news hacks' slants.

There are also warning signs for KAPLAN, INC.: Its shares are STILL NEARLY SIXTY PERCENT FROM THEIR ALL-TIME HIGHS, ITS PUTATIVE FLAGSHIP PAPER IS "LOSING 'SUBSTANTIAL MONEY'", and ITS MEDIA UNIT IS STILL VIRTUALLY WORTHLESS.