Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

Chet Simmons, the founder of ABC Sports and its veritable successor ESPN, has died. Without knowing much of him we can say by starting these two behemoths he had more impact than any other TV executive ever had on sport. In that he personifies good and bad -- the good being his outlets greatly professionalized and improved its TV coverage, the bad in that his and others' creations came to overwhelm the sports they cover, although that owes to many other things, not least cable. Couch potatoes everywhere owe a great debt to the man even as they've expanded their waistlines.

(Via the Crainiacs)

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Paywall is just another word for irrelevant.

We've lived without SLIME's rags before, and will do so again. When does the inevitable denouement occur?

Posted 9:48 PM by Gene

The problem with the Web is that....

Obama supports Israel. Period.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

A leading cardinal on Thursday told reporters that the scandal was "a conspiracy" against the church.

"This is a pretext for attacking the church," Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins said. "There is a well-organized plan with a very clear aim," he said.

Are pedophiles that well organized?

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: David "Waterloo" Frum is going left, meaning he's hired himself out to JonBoy or LIAR LIAR BROCK'S ON FIRE!

Why must the world stop with every utterance of the overrated pundits?

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Half of U.S. Home Loan Modifications Default Again

So why, Your Omnipotence, must we burn more money?

P. S. The Dow was UP 120!!!!!!!!!! and ended up 5, meaning not all Wall Street fairy tales have a happy ending.

Posted 12:40 PM by Gene

At the Vatican, keep your eyes on little things.

Last Friday, the Vatican offered a concert for the pope on his name day (St. Joseph). In a show of solidarity the pope invited his older brother, Georg, who has been touched by the abuse scandal.

Monsignor Georg Ratzinger admitted he slapped children years ago when he led a renowned choir in Regensburg, Germany.

The pope made brief remarks on faith and the beauty of music, but again without referring to developments in Germany.

Was even John Paul II in his last days ever this dense?

And who wants to start wagering the current pope resigns?

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

Gas up $1 a gallon on Obama's watch [BOOOOO! HISSSSS! overemphasis added]

And we're in a PERMANENT BULL MARKET! So there!

(Via EM)

Posted 10:52 AM by Gene

In our great city of Philthydelphia and its environs:

One in eight full-time employees in the city and its four suburban Pennsylvania counties works for a nonprofit organization. In all, that’s 242,000 people.

We're guessing it's one in two in the city. And that's not counting government. And in more good news:

Of the hospitals, schools, museums and other “public charity” organizations that filed tax returns, more than one-third ran an operating deficit in 2007. The red ink was worse among a narrower subgroup that excludes hospitals and higher education - 36 percent had deficits.

Meaning the taxpayer benefits in two ways!

And in other heartwarming news it seems our rep as a HIP! HOT! town is endangered by marauding thugs. But hey, so long as they have the HIP! HOT! technology!

AND our population's going up -- meaning we must be attracting a lot of those thugs!



And in somewhat more charming Philthydelphia news, our city has pioneered in keeping trees warm. We confess we do like a little of this whimsy every now and then.

Posted 10:09 AM by Gene

Six of one: Scum threatening Congresspeople.

Half-a-dozen of the other: News hacks secretly hoping it continues.

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

What is the "legacy" of At the Movies? That two schlubs could become zillionaires by raving most of the movies they saw for synergy's sake? If that's its "legacy" we needn't wonder why movie revuing is a corpse.

Goodbye, Gene-'n'-Rogerdom -- and good riddance.

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: MORE SENSATIONAL NON-BUSINESS STORIES AND SENSATIONAL STUPID HEDS FROM HENRY HONEST!!!!!!!!!!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

New claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week as layoffs ease and hiring slowly recovers.

The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for jobless benefits dropped by 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 442,000. That's below analysts' estimates of 450,000, according to Thomson Reuters.
Article Controls

But most of the drop resulted from a change in the calculations the department makes to seasonally adjust the data, a Labor Department analyst said. The department updates its methods every year. Excluding the effect of those adjustments, claims would have fallen by only 4,000.

DOW 200,000!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 1:41 PM by Gene

The Paper of Re-CORD thinks it can make up for this with a LONG story stating the obvious: that golf has evolved into a caste system; that the game is dull, that most of its players are dull, that it was an excuse for idiot real-estate speculation, that until the CADILLAC it was a dream for CEOs and their hangers-on. And no one should think it can't come back, though God knows it doesn't deserve to.

(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!!!!!!)

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

“Senator, my opinion is that the decision was justified,” he said. “Were it my decision to make, I would not have made that decision. So I think, that is to say that — no.”

But it WAS justified -- the thing won the Peeeeeeeeee-Ulitzer Prize!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:53 AM by Gene

One of the ratings agencies downgrades Portugal's debt, and...

Analysts, meanwhile, said that while the downgrade wasn't good news, Portugal still is in better shape than Greece.

TRANSLATION: The drunk standing up is in better shape than the drunk lying in the gutter.

DOW 100,000!!!!!

(Via Reuters)

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

Let's see how much the rabble hates the Wall Street Casino when the Dow reaches 15,000!!!!! PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

Where's your trickle-down gag, GEKKO KUDLOW?

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

Four months later, perhaps the first decent article about TGSM.

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

Which raises the question: With the business dominated by EZRAS and millionaires nursing hangovers (pardon: they only get drunk metaphorically) will they ever bother to document the new health wonders as they occur? Can they report at ground level? Or will we get the usual intermittent loud static from a shorted-out wobbling satellite whose camera in any case was blinded by space junk?

Posted 6:49 PM by Gene

The six- and seven-digit hacks are plainly back to their halo gag and intend to keep it up for a while. We should remember, however, that popularity does not make for a great president. Look at Ike. Look at Slick. Nor does unpopularity make for a bad one. Look at Lincoln. Look at Truman.

And though the days of incompetence now exist in a rapidly receding past we should assure our superiors bloviating away in their luxury news suites that unpopularity does not necessarily make for a great president.

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

Your mobile phone is not a megaphone, so don't shout. Be aware of your surroundings and try not to use your phone in situations where your conversation may disturb others. Be aware that your voice will distract a peaceful train carriage of newspaper-reading commuters or seem intrusive on a crowded bus. Intimate conversations are never appropriate in front of others. Equally, don't use foul language, have full-blooded rows, or talk about money, sex or bodily functions in front of witnesses. Try and respect your own - and other people's - privacy. There are certain places where it is unacceptable to use your phone: for example, art galleries, churches, libraries, hospitals. Respect the rules.

TRANSLATION: Most people should not own cell phones.

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

And how in God's name did EZRA KLEIN become indispensable?

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

Now this seems smarter: PEOPLE WARNER just got $7.4 million from the suckers of Quebec so DC COMICS PICTURES could open a videogame studio in Montréal.

$1,492,600,000 to go!

(Via the WAX)

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

A day after HISTORY!!!!!, a day after AMERICA CHANGED FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!, this is the allegedly "most popular" story on USAOKAY.com:

U.S. Olympic snowboard 'jeans' pants going on sale for $250

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

I don't know which is more irritating: the army of JONATHANS in Nirvana or the army of PILLHEAD'S ACCENTS as Cassandras. Where did they get this notion they're indispensable?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

PEOPLE WARNER may spend $1.5 BILLION on United Artists so it can put Leo the Lion on its MGM home videos. While we applaud the sentiment of the thing it is just another proof of Jeff Bew-KES's stupidity.

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

I am convinced one thing that started the slow decline in network television was the way the Fred Silverfish bean counters played with the theme songs in the sixties; it was their equivalent of the bugs and the snipes, and the audience knew it was being tampered with. For evidence we have no further to look than those two superb numbers "Cousins" (Patty Duke's theme) and the immortal "Smile! You're on Candid Camera!". Everyone must recall their jazzy lusty arrangements (I mean that in the old sense, but a little as well in the new). Then the creators changed them to something much less appealing; remember Patty Rock? Allen Funt changed his show's twice in two years. Both shows died quickly. We can lament that a good theme song isn't possible anymore, especially when the themes were frequently the only good part of many series (witness The Jetsons). With their dubious use of photography double-exposed and hidden the notion applied to these two shows more than most, but that their songs have so long survived them, that they can invoke happiness even today, is not at all astonishing; they were mini-courses in music appreciation.

I mention this for two reasons: first Sid Ramin wrote both; he was a childhood friend and lifelong associate of Leonard Bernstein's (and easily confused with Irwin Kostal, who also worked with Lenny and with Ramin); and second yesterday I found a site with three separate high-quality 320K downloads of the Candid Camera theme, an amazement as nearly every fifth-rate site devoted to TV themes as they almost all are has the same version from one of the late unlamented TVT Records's junk anthologies -- straight from a video soundtrack and overlaid with laughter. I've listened to this at least 200 times and expect to play it another 10,000. (This site also has three tracks of the allegedly missing 1970 theme music from The Hollywood Squares, something like fifty takes of the mentally-challenged cues from the original Family Feud, and -- I'm still downloading.)

Posted 11:02 AM by Gene

The bond market is saying that it’s safer to lend to Warren Buffett than Barack Obama.

Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market....

“It’s a slap upside the head of the government,” said Mitchell Stapley, the chief fixed-income officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees $22 billion. “It could be the moment where hopefully you realize that risk is beginning to creep into your credit profile and the costs associated with that can be pretty scary.”

GOD FOR PRE -- oh wait, we already have one.

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

It becomes ever more obvious the Catholic Church chose the wrong pope, but who'd have thought he'd be tripped up by sex-abuse problems?

Or perhaps given the Church these days, who wouldn't have thought it?

Posted 10:22 AM by Gene

I know Finviz doesn't have that big an audience but it's big enough, so I'm wondering if anyone's noticed in the "Top Insider Trading" box the dollar amounts for the selling are far greater than for the buying; it's been this way for some time. Why would this happen if everything's so hunky-dory?

Posted 10:10 AM by Gene

Repeal is a daydream without a substitute. Do the BANEHEADS have one? That makes it a daydream.

They also forget the old saw: time wounds all heels.

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

We don't want to liken Bart Stupak to Neville Chamberlain but they do have a piece of paper in common.

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

A further problem with deciphering the news is that the increasingly rare insights come in places you wouldn't expect to turn because they're so encrusted with politics, and so you never turn to them. It further helps that the leading Web sites do all in their power to obscure them with tiresome scrolling and user-friendly layouts. We would hardly expect this from a liberal Web site and are annoyed we had to find it through NRO, but the fact that such an article exists says maybe HISTORY won't be all it's cracked up to be.

And no she doesn't offer a solution -- but that makes one wonder whether there is a solution, HISTORY notwithstanding.

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

Oh and before you remind yourself that YOU WON THE NOBEL PRIZE, Your Omnipotence, there's still the tiny question of...foreign policy.

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

Cable TV is not doomed. Somehow, some way, the tyrannies that control the programming will be in charge twenty years hence. We would remind people, for instance, that PEOPLE WARNER traces its antecedents almost to the turn of the last century, and the telco business dates back from before then. Inevitably it becomes a question of how much we'll pay, which will be too much if we don't demand the same virtually free access to video we now have to news and music.

And no, lots of little people with cameras will not mean high-quality shows. It will just mean YouTube in hi-def.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

Nevertheless, the notion of creating a new entitlement at a time of record-setting federal deficits infuriated opponents, whose relentless, hyperbolic attacks would have scuttled it had Obama not kept up the pressure to pass it.

We're not sure A BANKRUPT MEDIA COMPANY BROUGHT DOWN BY IDIOT DEBT is in a position to say that.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Meantime the hacks give us another reason to trust them:

TIFFANY 4Q PROFIT RISES AS SALES REGAIN SPARKLE!!!!! [Sparkling overemphasis added]

Sparkling Tiffany is down 4.5 percent because it wasn't sparkling enough.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

One reason it has become a pestilence following the news is that when stories like these arise we're trying to predict history when we can't predict what we'll have for lunch. The easy thing is to say it won't be that good and it won't be that bad, but we can't be sure about those things because our first-rough-drafters of history never follow up. What happened to Dubya's prescription drug giveaway? Both sides agree: We'll find out if this works later -- and possibly too late.

Posted 9:29 AM by Gene

One thing's clear: the GOP can't come back so long as BANEHEAD is its House "leader".

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

Meantime HISTORY!!!!! may have taken care of HISTORY'S GREATEST PRESIDENT doing any more to solve the economy. The economy? What's an economy? (HUGE caveat: HENRY HONEST!!!!!!!!!!)

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

And yes, it is quite true we could have Democrats NOW AND FOREVER, but this may also be true:

In the run-up to the 2006 Congressional elections, Halperin predicted that George W. Bush would be "back over 53% any day now" and warned "If I were them [Democrats], I'd be scared to death about November's elections". ^[8] In fact, the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress and George W. Bush's approval rating remained in the 30s.^[9]

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

And count on our superiors the HACKS to do their part, even though it means we must quote from the seven-digit fraud Howie Hairshirt:

Trudy Lieberman, a longtime specialist in health reporting, offers a harsh verdict in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review. She says the press coverage "has been largely incoherent to the man on the street . . . failed to illuminate the crucial issues, [and] quoted special interest groups and politicians without giving consumers enough information to judge if their claims were fact or fiction."

Yes, but we made HISTORY!!!!!

Posted 9:18 AM by Gene

Our one solace to HISTORY!!!!! is that Dubya screwed up things so much, what's History's Greatest President to screw it up some more?