One & The Same

On the same day that Jon Stewart states unequivocally that the NY Times does not work as a liberal activist organization, they pull an all-time great mental-gymnastics move to slime (or at least make the attempt) Justice Clarence Thomas.

Which one didn't get the memo?

That about Sums it Up

9:30 AM PDT

I hate Daylight Savings Time. This study out of UCSB makes a good case against the most absurd DST myth: energy savings.

Decide for yourself.

Smoke & Mirrors only go So Far

TM notes: "Something isn't working".  No kidding.

We work with flowers and it's easy to see when the bloom is off the roses. Nobody wants the President to come and indoctrinate address their graduating youth:

The White House is ramping up an effort to promote a nationwide competition to decide which high school wins a commencement speech by President Obama.

An internal White House memo indicates that the White House is facing a shortage of applications less than a week before the deadline.

The competition was extended from the February 25 deadline until Friday, March 11 after few schools met the original application deadline. CBS News has learned a White House Communications Office internal memo dated February 22 noted "a major issue with the Commencement Challenge."

"As of yesterday we had received 14 applications and the deadline is Friday," the memo said. The memo also urged recipients to, "please keep the application number close hold."

A follow-up memo on February 28 reported receipt of 68 applications. Noting the competition among more than 1,000 schools last year, the memo said, "Something isn't working." It called on staffers to ask "friendly congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral offices" to encourage schools to apply.

The President became president by fooling people into believing charisma and grandiose rhetoric were an actual accomplishment. The bloom is off the rose and people are beginning to notice just how empty the suit really is.

Keep telling yourself that!

Pointing out the idiocy of Juan Williams used to be a hobby of mine. Then he went and started making sense; imagine how much of a monkey-wrench that threw into things!

Well, during yesterday's FNS panel discussion about Republican Presidential candidates, the idiot reappeared, if ever so briefly. It takes nearly all 9 minutes to get there, but the amazingly ridiculous statement in question comes at the 8:44 mark.

Making them Earn It

The NY Times is going for the dough with an online pay model, details to be coming soon according to this report:

During a New York Press Club Q&A session at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism, a man who identified himself as a retired reporter named Ken wanted to know why he should keep paying to receive the Grey Lady in hard copy.

"I subscribe to home delivery, but I get the next day's paper around 11:30 p.m. on the Internet," explained Ken, an older gentleman with a deep drawl. "The depth of the online edition is so vast," he said--and "the thinness of the print edition is so noticeable" as to be useless.

Keller clearly hadn't anticipated the question. "Um," he paused at the outset of his reply. "I'm not gonna argue that you should pay for something that you don't find useful. . . . I still personally like the print edition of the paper." For instance, "I like that I can read it on the subway," Keller continued. "I like that I can share it around the breakfast table. I like lying back in bed reading the newspaper better than I like lying back in bed reading the website on my iPad. ... But look, if you don't find that it's worth the money, I'm not gonna argue that you should donate to the New York Times as an act of charity."

Ken will soon be getting more bang for his buck. As a print subscriber, he won't be impacted when the Times moves forward with its long-delayed plans for erecting a metered paywall around its online content. Habitual online readers who don't buy the paper in print, however, will have to start paying for monthly access to nytimes.com. New York Times Co. chief executive Janet Robinson announced earlier this week that the set-up for the new online model is in its "final testing phase," and that "We expect it will launch shortly."

But "Will it be worth it?," is the bigger question. 

One Man's Flimflammery is another Man's Crime

Bill Gates on-stage in CA has this to say about Government accounting practices:

The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist said state budgets have received a puzzling lack of scrutiny and have been "riddled with gimmicks" aimed at deferring or disguising the true costs of public employees' health care and pension obligations, citing California's ongoing budget crisis as an example of creative deficit spending and the subsequent cuts to education spending as an unacceptable cost.

"[R]eally, when you get down to it, the guys at Enron never would have done this. This is so blatant, so extreme," Gates said of state governments' accounting practices generally. "Is anyone paying attention to some of the things these guys do? They borrow money -- they're not supposed to, but they figure out a way -- they make you pay more in withholding to help their cashflow out, they sell off the assets, they defer the payments, they sell off the revenues from tobacco."

Gates argued that government accounting practices should be more like private accounting.

The Enron line of course is splashy and makes the headline at the Huffington Post. I wonder though if that assessment is wholly accurate; they wouldn't because they were more upstanding guys who understood how wrong it was or they wouldn't because they knew it was a one-way ticket to pound-me-in-the...well, you know...prison.

Government accounting rules, by necessity, are different than what us little guys here in the real world have to live with. Acknowledging for a moment that this is 100% necessary and true, I'm still left to wonder how this is okay. What does it say of a government that allows itself the luxury of what it willingly imprisons it's citizens for?