no one to blame but themselves

Updated – Aug 28 2009:

Oops.  Either it’s time to buy newspaper stock on the theory that it can’t get much worse, or maybe its all over.

Newspapers’ financial woes worsened in the second quarter as advertising sales shrank by 29 percent, leaving publishers with $2.8 billion less revenue than they had at the same time last year.

It’s the deepest downturn yet during a three-year free fall in advertising revenue — newspapers’ main source of income. The magnitude of the industry’s advertising losses have intensified in each of the last 12 quarters.

The numbers released Thursday by the Newspaper Association of America weren’t a shock, given the dramatic erosion mirrored the advertising losses that the largest U.S. newspaper publishers already had reported for the April-June period.

Still, the statistics served as a stark reminder of the crisis facing newspapers as they try to cope with a brutal recession and advertising trends that have shifted more marketing dollars to the Internet.

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Aug 21 2009:

As far as I am concerned the parochial print and TV news media can’t die off fast enough.  Recently a couple of news items have highlighted for me exactly why journalists are out of touch with the real world – a complete lack of professionalism, disregard for fact checking and suppression of news:

First off:  last week much of the shrieking on both left and right concerned a black man who attended a Health Care

crazy?

 rally in Arizona openly carrying an AR-15 rifle, and pistol holstered at his hip.  All legal, no threatening gestures made towards anyone in the crowd or anyone else for that matter.   In fact judging by the demeanor of those around him, they certainly didn’t perceive him to be a threat least of all to themselves.    CNN posts:” Obama at risk from gun-toting protesters?”  MSNBC then aired cropped video  footage of the same man yet cast him as a white man (36 seconds in), while the talking heads go on about how racist angry protesters might take a shot at Obama. 

not crazy? never happened?

Apparently the MSM’s memory hole has obliterated any recollection of  the New Black Panthers openly sporting shotguns at the 2000 Republican Convention in Houston TX.   Where was the concerned pontificating about crazy militias (isn’t that what the Black Panthers are?) endangering the safety of GW?  What?  There wasn’t any?   In last weeks ’reporting’  there wasn’t even a semblance of impartiality – no mention of similar events – as if the armed protests by the (presumably liberal) Black Panthers had never occurred.    

Matt Welch at Reason Online summarises what is happening…..

Meanwhile, I can predict the kind of “hate” that will escape attention by the new desk. It’s the kind that assumes, lack of evidence notwithstanding, that we are always–but especially now that liberal Democrats run the country–on the verge of a race war. It’s the kind that takes a surface look at current events, luxuriates in historically ignorant alarmism, then proclaims that America itself is “delusional,” “irrational,” “hysterical.” You can’t get away with hating a (Democratic) president’s policies, or even a single policy, but hating on the country as a whole for failing to get on board? Well, that’s just journalism!

Secondly:  The sound of insects chirping as the MSM with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal suppresses or at best ignores a ‘good news’ story coming out of the west bank via the International Monetary Fund.  It would seem that Palestinians living in the West Bank have won the economic lottery (real wage increases of up to 24% [!] and economic growth of 7%), whilst those lobbing rockets from the Gaza strip have not.  Or is it perhaps because security measures put in place by the Israeli’s have put an end to suicide bombers originating in the West Bank, coupled with a desire by Palestinians to get on with their lives, leaving the wreckage which is Gaza to the fascist Hamas?   Hmm….

I smell a rodent of unusual size….

afghan elections

UPDATED: Aug 21 2009.

Well, that was hardly unexpected;  the Red Star can barely offer up a grudging acknowledgement that things weren’t all that bad in Afghanistan.   Featuring a column entitled  “millions of afghans vote,  but is it enough“, one rather gets the impression that Ms Dimanno was hoping for a disaster.   

_______

Well, the Afghan elections seem to have gone quite a bit better than predicted hoped by the prophets of doom.   26 Afghans were killed exercising their right for freedom from oppression by the agents of the mad mullahs – that’s it, that’s all. 

Terry Glavin has it summarised nicely here.  Speaking of which, he notes and debunks some weirdness appearing on the socialist worker site.  These loons are right off the rails:

Bush and his coterie of crooks and warmongers told us that only a military invasion could liberate the people, and especially the women, of Afghanistan from the brutal, misogynistic and “medieval” Taliban movement.  

There was no mention, of course, of the substantial support offered to the Taliban regime in the late 1990s when Clinton was president and in the early days of the Bush presidency, nor of the long and ugly history of U.S. intervention in Central and South Asia, which was an important precondition for the rise of Islamism. (WTF? Vietnam, Cambodia = Islamism?)

Ordinarily I wouldn’t give more than about two seconds to contemplate this kind of drivel, but our writer at SW was convinced that even slick willy was in on the whole thing, so I got to thinking.   I understand that Hillary’s long suffering husband wasn’t above execising the Leeden doctrine*, especially when special prosecutors were poking around his habit of poking around -  but  just how much ’support’ did the Clinton administration supposedly offer to the Taliban, as claimed by ‘Nick’ at SW?  According to the SIPRI database, none, zero, nada.  As in not one dollar of evil imperialistic military industrial complex support delivered to the Taliban / Afghanistan between 1993 and 2000.    Records produced by Defense Department also show nothing in the way of miltary contracts or assistance for period of the Clinton administration.

And as for Dubbya – the entire deliveries of major military equipment to Afghanistan between 2001 – 2008 consisted of 188 M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers (I’m thinking ’hangar’ queens) and in the neighbourhood of about 4000 up-armoured HUMMVs. 

Myth – busted.

*“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

savage compassion – or what’s wrong with progressives

Quite a few self identified leftists are distancing themselves from the recent and disgusting habit of many of their more ‘progressive’ brethren of aligning themselves alongside the islamosfacists.   Most notably Bernard-Henri Levy  (identifying reflexive anti-Americanism as only one of the hatreds at the heart of the new left) and Nick Cohen (describing his disappointment with the apologists of islamic terror);  and now Yacov Ben Moshe has produced a short essay which summarises most eloquently the reasons why, while I often feel that I hold classically liberal values, I cannot under any circumstances find common cause with the progressives amongst us:  

Savage Compassion:

The progressive demands that we believe his claim that he serves a higher truth and a loftier goal.  He tries to force us to accept the idea that his ideas are unassailably good. And, even if they fail to be good, his virtuous pretentions are supposed to indemnify him from guilt or shame.  Even if he make mistakes, behaves badly or cause harm, virtue will save him from blame.  His “caring and good intentions” are supposed to trump the fact that he cares about the wrong things in the wrong way and his intentions are a humbug. Virtue is more than a sham- it is the prim, ruthless face of coercion. It is aimed outward, at others, as a self-justification; an accusation and, above all, a yearning for Utopia.

 

Utopia is an attack on the individual.  There has never been a Utopia that could survive for long without crushing the individual.  That is why “selflessness” is considered a key element of virtue.  Hannah Arendt foresaw the destructiveness of progressive virtue many years ago.  In her work On Revolution she wrote:

“Virtue has indeed been equated with selflessness ever since Robespierre preached a virtue that was borrowed from Rousseau, and it is the equation which has put, as it were, its indelible stamp on the revolutionary man and his innermost conviction that the value of a policy may be gauged by the extent to which it will contradict all particular interests, and that the value of a man may be judged by the extent to which he acts against his own interest and against his own will.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

RTWT

things you won’t read about in the MSM

Update: June 17 2009:

From the comments – good catch Gordo.  At least the National Post has a Bloomsbury item on this non-news event.

______________

Update: June 16 2009:

This is very significant news, because, as Michael Barnett writes in an email, one of the following must be true:

1. The Japanese are trying to secretly divest themselves of about 25% of their US debt. (They own about $600B in US debt.)

2. The Japanese are acting as Chinese or North Korean agents in trying to help them divest themselves of US debt in secret.

3. There is an enormous sum of counterfeit US debt out there and these guys are trying to sell some of it.

None of these cases bodes well for the US debt market.

__________

June 14 2009:

So, apparently two Japanese nationals were apprehended at the Italian / Swiss border carrying $134 Billion in US Treasury bearer bonds.   

1 3 4 Billion….Kind of blows the doors off the tired customs dude asking whether you are carrying $10K doesn’t it? 

At any rate, you might think that two people carrying the equivalent of 1/4 of the entire Canadian debt might rate a front page mention in more than a couple of our intrepid journals, and yet – mysteriously quiet.  [sound of crickets].   For instance, if you or I were to have in our possession the equivalent to the entire GDP of several african nations, and we were caught at a border with it, maybe the local, nay the international press might be interested.  If they’re fake it’s a story.  If the bearer bonds are real, its also a story!  

Go here to read some analysis… Its weird, but then again….

yet another ‘industry’ ripe for an OBailout

Its a good news bad news sort of story – of free spending big labour suddenly falling on hard times following substantial spending during the 2008 US presidential elections.  Coincidentally the new administration slashes funding to the very department charged with enforcing disclosure of union election spending.   

The WSJ carries a story today [print edition - europe]  about the hard times which have befallen two large Union organisations, the SEIU and AFL-CIO.  According to the story, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ..”spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama“, but sadly have found themselves indebted to the tune of $2.3mil.  Meanwhile the AFL-CIO carries liabilities ‘equal to more than 80% of its $189mil (!) in assets. 

I tried to hold back the tears, but was laughing too hard.

careful what you wish for

On occasion and what with the economy in the tank, some folk muse openly about imposing carbon based penalties on China – a new form of protectionism if you will.   The implications of this need to be understood before our poll happy politicians attempt to score domestic points – fortunately some cautionary thoughts are available over at Marginal Revolution.  RTWT.

• It can be very hard to identify and isolate the energy inputs into an exported product, especially if the host government is uncooperative and a lot of money is at stake.
• Last I checked China was funding a big chunk of our government’s debt.  Confronting them would have to be bundled with a regime of extreme fiscal conservatism and unilateral foreign policy.
• Chinese citizens wanting clean air at home are possibly our biggest ally so let’s not alienate them.

how fast can you get your meter to spin?

The Final Word:

north korea, its earth hour friendly - every day of the year!

 

Oops…..….evil candle – next in line to be banned once we have gotten rid of electricity

——–

Bumped:

Diversity includes celebrating those with ‘unique’ cultural points of view – mine just happens to include enjoying electricity and heat……

_________________________

Earth Hour is on us again – except in North Korea where it seems it is always earth hour, every day, every week, every year.

Mind you, if you plan to emit CO2 in an environmentally friendly^TMeco dancing sort of way, then you get a pass from the star…..

Me?  I plan to celebrate earth hour in Orlando FLA, with the AC maxed and an extra chilled beer or three…

re-education in three, two, one……

nah, nah, nah-nah – hey hey – goodbye……

While I don’t wish ill to the several hundred CBC employees to be axed, the sooner this dinosaur meets its asteroid, the better.   The mother corp has long since ceased to represent Canadians, rather forcing a vision of Canada which panders to a particular set of voters matched with barely disguised contempt for any political party other than the Liberals.   This coupled with amateurish and frankly embarrassing television content, is it any wonder that advertisers abandoned them in droves?    I for one can’t wait for the corpse to give its last shudder and expire.  Jay Currie summarises my feelings much better than I can write:

A billion a year to bring Canadians Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

10,000 employees (less today’s 800)…what could they possibly be doing. I mean if you are going to buy syndicated crap you pick up a phone and call the syndicator. Then you write a cheque. Even at government staffing levels that’s a five person job.

Bloated and stupid.

From time to time I’ve written about a clerisy – in the Arnold/Elliot sense. These are irritating people, convinced of their own literary and cultural superiority, the certain truth of AGW, the vileness of America (at least under Bush) and the virtue of Canada. While I may not like them very much, they were the bedrock base of a) CBC-2, b) the CBC in general. Not that they watched television you understand. While plenty other people listened to CBC-2 the clerisy actually saw it as important and, to a degree, went to bat to try to save it. They failed and, in their failure, eliminated the articulate defence of the CBC in general.

sound off – ontario highways, pay for use?

Hwy 401 at Montreal Rd circa 1965? Notice how little traffic there is....

Anyone who has travelled the 400 series of highways in Ontario, will have noticed both the substantial rise in commercial truck traffic and the near simultaneous degradation of the highway infrastructure itself.  A while ago I hummed and hawed about whether it was time to consider usage charges or tolls on our highways.  Usage charges, sometimes known as congestion charges, provide  some significant benefits, (1) primarily by ensuring that those who use the roads the most pay for the wear and tear (2) it prices in what economists refer to as externalities into the total cost of ownership of the road, and (3) depending upon the structure of the charges, it can influence the conditions of use, particularly by encouraging certain types of traffic to use the road at periods of lower demand.   Two recent activities prompted me to revisit the idea – the ongoing widening of the 401 between Sydenham Road and Hwy 15 (and eventually to Joyceville Road), and a visit to Germany and the Netherlands. 

the periodic table – updated

People have told me I was full of it before, but I never imagined…..

Research has led to discovery of the heaviest element yet known to
science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction (that normally takes less than a second) to take as long as 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neurons and deputy neurons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization causes more morons to become neurons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, which has half as many peons but twice the number of morons.

this shouldn’t be the change you were hoping for

I don’t think for the moment that anyone is seriously predicting this sort of outcome, however it must be remembered, [difficult as it is in our ahistorical post modern era] that plenty of successful twentieth century tyrants leaned heavily on populist movements generated under economic duress and creating and leveraging fears prompted by uncertain futures:

The writer Webster Tarpley has argued that classical fascism is not just a police state imposed by a powerful elite, though it may end up that way.  To cement the new order, fascism relies upon a widespread mass movement from below in which the people throw their enthusiastic support behind an apparent saviour.”  and

——

One of the more ominous results of the Bush years was a steady concentration of power in the hands of the president.  For one man to hold such power, and with legions of followers doing his bidding, is anathema to a system of checks and balances.  And when a nation crippled by war and economic disaster is told that it must unite behind a messianic leader who will save it from destruction, history tends to provide a grim view on the future of that nation’s democratic political institutions.  

Although I tend to disagree with the author – rather I expect the next populist authoritarian movement to be located, not in the USA [due to no particular skill attributable to Obama] but rather to one of the European tribes, especially if this particular economic downturn turns out to be both lengthy, exacerbated by a protectionist trade war [buy american anyone?] and immune to the ’stimulus’ of corporatist europe.

right to play – something i can get behind

There are a lot of charities out there – it is often difficult to differentiate them and / or to determine which are the hustlers and which are concealing an agenda.

However, if you have kids and you love to watch them play – then give a kid a chance to play again. Kids helped by RTP have seen some pretty horrific things and your donation can help them on the path to regaining a childhood.

what i needed in high school….

….was incentive.   These guys have invented something even I would invest in.  Go public young men, go public…..

One Sunday afternoon, Steven and I were sharing ideas, and I mentioned to him that I had an exam the following day and that if I were to study I was sure to get an A. But I was enjoying my Sunday afternoon, and I made it clear to him that I had no intention of studying. That’s when, in order to provide me with motivation, we made the following agreement: If I got an A on the exam, he would give me $100, and if I didn’t get an A, I would give him $20. We thought every student would like this type of motivation, therefore, we established Ultrinsic Motivator Inc.

dew knot trussed yore spell chequer

…the subject of some derision, and an insidious assault on the correct spelling of words like harbour and neighbour, microsoft’s dictionary has long been an annoyance to me.    So who checks the spell checkers? 

It turns out that much work is being done with context based natural language processing – so perhaps there is hope yet for the survival of ‘cheque’ after all.

all is well in the world – the economist has arrived

For the past several years at my airport of departure I have initiated what has become over time a near ritual – namely the acquisition of the Economist prior to boarding the plane.  I have at times contemplated taking a subscription but for a variety of reasons never actually did so.  Thus, I was thoroughly surprised and delighted to have received a years subscription from the Parental Units this Christmas.  And the first issue is their year ending double – especially anticipated for its assemblage of essays on fascinating topics.

Best article in this issue:  “Light on a lonely Rock“  the story of the construction of the fastnet lighthouse south of Ireland.  I have sometimes imagined that in a different life I might have been a good lighthouse keeper – comes from reading too many ‘Tim to the Rescue” books;

Article to keep you awake at night: “The way the brain buys” the psychology of retail purchasing and exactly how much they already know about the choices you make when you step into a store – sort of freaky..