Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

their coverage will follow:

David Almasi, executive director of the National Center For Public Policy Research, kept a log of commercials aired during the ABC World News broadcast from June 24th to October 12, a period of approximately three-and-a-half months following ABC’s rejection of health care-related ads from Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.20 The results are as follows:

In July, 173 of 326 commercials, or 53 percent, were PhRMA company advertisements. In August, 176 of 321 commercials, or 54.8 percent, were PhRMA. In September, 156 of 293, or 53.24 percent, were PhRMA commercials. Of the eight days in October analyzed, 45 out of 80 commercials, or 56.25 percent, were PhRMA company ads.

The grand total? In the 98 days of ABC World News programming analyzed from June to October, the broadcast featured 1,102 commercials, 597 of which were PhRMA member company advertisements, representing 54.17 percent of total commercials aired.

Notes Almasi, “Ad after ad on World News came from members of the drug lobby group PhRMA. It’s almost laughable how many ads they run each day. If they were to stop, it would seem doubtful the broadcasts could continue.”

The data, representing months of recording and logging of ABC World News commercials viewed in the Washington D.C. market, reveal an astonishing double layer of hypocrisy. ABC News, in spite of its morally superior affectations against “advocacy ads,” is perfectly willing to turn over large chunks of its news programming to a politician – if that politician is backed by companies representing more than half its advertisements.

You might recall ABC shrugged off charges that they did not or would not bring any opposing view to the broadcast in question.

Never forget that the broadcast networks revenue source is. Their product is an ad platform, PERIOD! Over the last 15 years the number of choices (read ad platforms) have increased and thus the need to have that guaranteed source of income becomes vital.

Remember the Quiz Show scandals:

The firestorm that resulted, claimed Variety, “injured broadcasting more than anything ever before in the public eye.” Even the sainted Edward R. Murrow was sullied when it was revealed that his celebrity interview show, CBS’s Person to Person, provided guests with questions in advance. Perhaps most significantly in terms of the future shape of commercial television, the quiz show scandals made the networks forever leery of “single sponsorship” programming. (emphasis mine) Henceforth, they parceled out advertising time in fifteen, thirty, and sixty-second increments, wrenching control away from single sponsors and advertising agencies.

Forever is apparently not all that it’s cracked up to be.

If any of this surprises you, then it is very likely you haven’t been paying attention.

…once known as Global warming until some inconvenient truths caused those to change the name.

On Morning Joe Scarborough is actually challenging the idea that people who are skeptical should be treated as pariahs, and Bill Press and Jeff Sacks are defending that concept with relish!

Meanwhile at the conference a few interesting things are going on:

Today the gloves came off and the true purpose of the “global warming” scare became nakedly visible. Hugo Chavez, the Socialist president of Venezuela, blamed “global warming” on capitalism – and received a standing ovation from very nearly all of the delegates, lamentably including those from those of the capitalist nations of the West that are on the far Left – and that means too many of them.

Previously Robert Mugabe, dictator of Rhodesia, who had refused to leave office when he had been soundly defeated in a recent election, had also won plaudits at the conference for saying that the West ought to pay him plenty of money in reparation of our supposed “climate debt”.

Inside the conference center, “world leader” after “world leader” got up and postured about the need to Save The Planet, the imperative to do a deal, the necessity to save the small island nations from drowning, etc., etc., etc.

Reason has samples from some of the speeches.

Now consider, technology that allows video conferencing is available all over. These world leaders are leaving a huge “carbon footprint” in their travel and the travel of their encourages. If this was the crisis they claimed it was why would this not be done by video?

The truth is that taxpayers around the world are paying for booze, board, broads, and the best foods for the delegates who attend, this is the international gravy train. These people don’t get involved to eat a sandwich on their couch looking at a screen, it is for an easy life and status.

It is the modern equivalent of the feudal system, live like a lord and let the serfs (read taxpayers) support them.

Are they all corrupt? That is an unfair generalization as unfair as my pal Dave when he says every pol is corrupt. I’m sure quite a few got in with good intentions, I’m sure that like the great plantation owners of the 17th and 18th century or the Nobles of 10 centuries ago they see this as perfectly normal and never question it. But like the end of the world predictions from the Seven Day Adventists and the Jehovah Witnesses when the predicted end doesn’t happen the data will adjust to push it to another later date giving that much more time for us to do something (read spend money) to save the day.

Andrew Bolt who has been all over this calls out the high priest (and great benefactor) on a few falsehoods:

No, Al Gore is a liar.

Last week we showed that the first of his Climategate defences was so preposterously wrong that it was doubtful he had even read the leaked emails he tried to dismiss. You see, five times in two interviews he dismissed the emails as dated documents that were at least 10 years old:

I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old.

In fact, most of the controversial emails, as I showed, were from just the past two years – and the most recent from just last month – November 12, to be precise.

So Gore was so wrong on the first count that it was difficult to think of any way an honest man could have made such a mistake. Five times.

But now Steve McIntyre has exploded the second argument Gore made. And now all doubt in my mind is gone. Gore must have simply lied.

Read the whole damning thing

What will come of this? The can will be kicked down the road, the dates will change and a new conference, well stocked with the best foods and wines, will be schedules and the elites of the world will again take their private jets and limo’s to attend and beat their breasts about how much they care.

And people are falling for this? It brings to mind The Ribos Operation and the 4th doctor:

DOCTOR: I wonder if ol’ Taffy knows the real value of it. “Scringe stone” found in a dead man’s pocket? A lost mine? A phoney ma… are people still falling for that old guff? I mean are they?
ROMANA: You mean you didn’t believe his story?
DOCTOR: No.
ROMANA: But he had such an honest face.
DOCTOR: Romana!! You can’t be a successful crook with a DIShonest face, can you?
ROMANA: Oh.

And they will forever.

Update: You just can’t make this stuff up:

It’s Robert Mugabe, lecturing the leaders at the Copenhagen.

And now President Barack Obama is there. He’s saying, “The time for talk is over.” Ironically, he’s talking.

If every leader did to his country what Mugabe has done, carbon emissions would drop dramatically, and yet leaders could still jet off to conferences and talk about how moral they are. And the conference organizers would treat them with respect.

Time to break out my favorite cartoon again:

The Morality of Global Warming!

Update 2: Stephen Glover nails it:

He points out that England’s prince and prime minister both took (separate) chartered planes to the conference and asks of the Prime Minister:

Could he perhaps have shared an aircraft with Prince Charles? Might he have considered taking a scheduled flight to the Danish capital, of which there were 16 on Tuesday?

Evidently not. It is odd, isn’t it, how climate change doomsayers such as Prince Charles and Mr Brown are so often unprepared to make the smallest sacrifice in their own daily lives to address a threat which they assert is literally deadly.

but they are not alone:

The Copenhagen summit, supposed to produce an agreement limiting greenhouse gases, has, according to experts, the same carbon footprint as a medium-sized African country such as Malawi.

There are an amazing 34,000 delegates attending the event, and the grander among them are forced, says my colleague Robert Hardman in Copenhagen, to park their private jets in Norway because Denmark has run out of Tarmac, and to procure their gas-guzzling limousines from Germany.

The threat is apparently only for the little people.

Update 3: Apparently Charles needs to pay more attention to his mother’s example:

There was a buzz at King’s Cross this morning as platform 11b began crawling with police.

Could it be a drug bust, the crowd wondered? Or was a rock star about to board a train?

Then a small lady in a headscarf appeared, a handbag on one arm and a posy on the other.

Fellow passengers on the 10.45 First Capital Connect service to King’s Lynn couldn’t quite believe their eyes as the Queen stepped on board a first class carriage.

Why take a public train when you are the Queen of England?

A Buckingham Palace spokesman added: ‘Members of the Royal Family, including the Queen, frequently use scheduled train services.

‘We have to look at issues such as cost effectiveness and security but do try to when it is appropriate.’

The Queen does, of course, also have use of the Royal Train – but that costs taxpayers £57,142 each time it is taken out of its sidings.

When she dies, England as we knew it dies.

I’m detecting a pattern here:

Your candidate dies before the election, decide “he” still qualifies for the ballot and appoint someone else!

You candidate is about to lose an election in the Senate? Fudge the rules and put a different one up, deadlines be damned!

Want to push Global warming and grab a big chunk of the worlds money? Fudge the data and the info.

Acorn supports your candidates but congress votes to cut off funding? Rule that Acorn has a constitutional right to those funds.

Conservatives use the rules of the senate to slow things down? Ignore them.

…about three hours into the reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment, and this stopped the reading of the bill — even without unanimous consent.

“In allowing Sanders to do that, it appears the parliamentarian has broken the standing rules of the Senate,”

The rule in question?

“Reading: Under Rule XV, paragraph 1, and Senate precedents, an amendment shall be read by the Clerk before it is up for consideration or before the same shall be debated unless a request to waive the reading is granted; in practice that includes an ordinary amendment or an amendment in the nature of a substitute, the reading of which may not be dispensed with except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order; interruptions of the reading of an amendment that has been proposed are not in order, even for the purpose of proposing a substitute amendment to a committee amendment which is being read. When an amendment is offered the regular order is its reading, and unanimous consent is required to call off the reading.” (Riddick’s Senate Procedure, P.43-44)

Notice a pattern here? Over and over the rules or the laws or the standards are not amenable to their liberal cause. So rather than changing the law, or the rules or the standards our liberal friends decide to ignore them or fudge them.

There is an important lesson for conservatives here. If in the senate they are willing to play with the rules to stop delaying tactics they will be willing to change the rules to pass this bill or any other. The only rules are to win right now, immediate gratification.

And realize this doesn’t just apply to republicans, remember the misogyny and the tactics used against Hillery Clinton during the primaries in 08? If conservatives had used them we would have been pariahs.

Conservatives better understand the rules of engagement because if we bring a shield to a sword fight we are going to get cut.

I really think this is symptomatic to a decision made just over a decade ago but I think that is a post for another day when I want to make a speech.

Democrats are shocked and Angry. Bernie Sanders proposed a 700+ page amendment and Tom Colburn objected to the waving of the reading of it.

So right now on C-Span 2 the entire 700+ page Amendment is being read aloud.

To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents. At this current pace, it will take 38 hours to get through the entire amendment.

I wonder how many more amendments will be offered with Colburn on the floor. I strongly suggest tuning into C-Span 2. You will hear the words amendment of the amendment quite a lot. This is actually important.

What happens in the federal code is that the origonal code gets amended in a law, rather than listing what the existing law is in the bill it say: This section is amended as follows. Often a bill is amended so many times that you have an amendment amending a bill as amended to change one or two phrases. Or something described somewhere else.

If the congressman is not familiar with the existing law, or the existing amendments then one can easily make huge changes to public law affecting millions with a sentence that is almost totally unintelligible to a person reading it.

I’d say it’s watching the sausage factory at work but as I said before that would be an insult to sausage makers like Mike Romano.

As you might guess I love it!

I think if the senate rules allow it, he should call for a quorum call to force all the senators to be attend said reading.