Clipping blog

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• The Delivery Presents – The Show No Stinking Phone Company Can Stop
• Clearing the Browser Tabs – Great Moments in Government Meddling Friday Edition
• Ezra Klein: Professional Left? Me? Perish the Thought!

The Delivery Presents – The Show No Stinking Phone Company Can Stop Posted: 19 Aug 2011 05:30 AM PDT I’d like to thank the fine striking layabouts at Verizon for Episode 107. I wrote earlier in the week about my telephone/internet problems last week (which started the Tuesday night I recorded Episode 106), which were measurable worse Tuesday night. I couldn’t keep a stable connection long enough to run Skype and UStream so, with much reluctance, I scrapped the live show about 25 minutes into the night. SMP Mike and I went old-school, just him and me, and even then we were fortunate to stay connected for more than 9 minutes at a time. At that rate, it would have taken us a couple of hours to get a full one-hour show in. Frustrations abounded and we actually considered abandoning the whole effort. I admit, I was extremely unhappy. Luckily, SMPMike talked me into one more attempt. We decided to shorten the segments to 15 minutes each and made a 30-minute show instead of the hour-long extravaganza you’ve come to know and love. We still ran into several technical problems, but you shouldn’t notice any of them because SMPMike and I are that good! Even though the show is short, I packed it full of all manner of good commentary. I opened a can up on Ed Schultz and his risible lie about Rick Perry, and used the incident to illustrate why the left uses simple character attacks (“racist”, “stupid”, “oafish”) against Republican Presidential candidates. I’ll give you a hint: progressive ideology is built on a central premise that must stay intact, else the entire program falls apart. I spent the second half in a small amount of pain over several movies Hollywood plans to foist on us over the next year. I honestly don’t know why we movie lovers tolerate all the drek the major studios shovel at us, but I think the presence of Hong Kong Phooey on a coming attractions list should be our last straw. Then again, moviegoers are fairly passive. We didn’t rebel after Transformers 2, so why should the defilement of a beloved cartoon character from our past rouse us? Maybe it will. Listen in and be sure to tell me what you think! The Delivery - Episode 107 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Great Moments in Government Meddling Friday Edition Posted: 19 Aug 2011 03:10 AM PDT Some months ago, I wrote about the Community Reinvestment Act and the considerable part it played in the financial crisis from which we still haven’t recovered. Ed Driscoll’s post yesterday tied the CRA in to more financial deviltry, namely the bogus work done by ratings agencies like Standard and Poor’s. I think between his post (and the links therein) and mine, you can get a very good overview of just how badly we’ve suffered from government meddling in the housing market. It’s going to take some time to unravel the mess our Congress created with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which you can trace back into the CRA) and the sub-prime loans they bought with reckless abandon. We might as well get a clear view of what gave the train a big push off the track so that we don’t do it again. And while I’m linking Ed, check out his takedown of drama queen/”economist” Paul Krugman. And now, links! I wonder if we can call the President’s “listening tour” of the Midwest, The Old and Bus-ted Tour? After all these years, there is one thing we can say for sure about education spending: more does not, in any way, lead to better. Nothing brings out the cries of “raaaaacism” like telling the truth about criminals and the misguided politically-correct people who enable them. Well, I guess you could run for President as a Republican. That would do it, too. I’m with Doug Ross. I don’t know how we survived the days of cigarette advertisements, toys with sharp edges and small parts, bicycles without helmets, BB guns, and violent cartoons either. To be perfectly honest, I’d like to bring some of that back. I think kids would be happier and more fulfilled, but it could just be the nostalgia talking. It is really appropriate for the three Democratic Senators on the Joint Committee to start politicking in the media before they’ve had a chance to meet with the rest of the members? Well, of course it isn’t, but since when did the big-spenders ever play fair? I really liked this piece by Andrew Price at Big Hollywood about the dearth of good roles for actresses that aren’t Playboy centerfold clones. These days, the union label is wrapped around a couple meaty fists. Now you see Venus; now you don’t. Okay, you can still see Venus, but it’s still a cool video. So you think you know your Kung Fu, huh? No, not the martial art, the classic television show from the early 1970s that doesn’t get run nearly enough in syndication. Here are 11 things you may not know about the show. Once you learn them, maybe you’ll go back and watch, or maybe buy a season or two to help The Shack out. I’m hesitant to watch the remake of Fright Night (another remake? Really Hollywood?) because I liked the original. It was campy and scary and hit all the right notes for a good “popcorn movie”. However, one can not go against the word of Kurt Loder. Football schmootball. My favorite sports season of the year starts in October, with a nationally-televised hockey game on Versus.

Ezra Klein: Professional Left? Me? Perish the Thought! Posted: 18 Aug 2011 12:01 PM PDT I know I pick on Ezra Klein, who blogs professionally for the Washington Post, quite often, but it’s only because he deserves it. As I’ve shown, he has a tendency to take a basic left-wing talking point, wrap it up in a softer shell, paint it with a couple plausible-looking statistics (if he’s feeling energetic), and offer it as truth. Now, I realize that makes him no different from just about every other blogger on the planet, but he’s not just another blogger. He is a paid, full-time “journalist”, not just for one of the largest and most respected newspapers in the country but also for Bloomberg and Newsweek. He also appears frequently on MS-NBC as a guest and fill-in host. His platform gives him authority he simply would not have if he regularly wrote for, say, The Klein Bottle, or whatever he might call his own blog nowadays. So when he writes patently ridiculous stuff like this (via memeorandum), it’s worth my time to knock it down. Greg Sargent has a nice take on the e-mail an Obama campaign official sent mocking Paul Krugman and the "firebaggers." But whenever I read these periodic eruptions about "the professional left," my main thought is: if I were a member of the professional left, I would be stoked. [Emphasis mine, italics in the original] If? If?? I have no idea who Klein is trying to fool with this silly attempt to place himself well outside the group of established, full-time, and fairly well-compensated Democratic Party content-generators, but whoever they are, he must think them incredibly stupid. First of all, it’s obvious that his paid positions and his political slant place him very squarely in the membership of the professional left. Even a blind man wearing earmuffs could find those little clues in half a nanosecond. Beyond that, though, it’s flat-out dishonest for Klein to say Jane Hamsher and her Firedoglake blog as “professional” in the same paragraph where he says he isn’t. Hamsher is a lot of things, but paid by the left-wing establishment really isn’t one of them. I’m sure she picks up a check once in a while for a piece she might write elsewhere, but unless things have changed drastically, Firedoglake is supported by its members and by advertising. Hamsher is not backed by a single national media organization (much less three) or a cable news network. She was not a “fellow” at a professional operation like The American Prospect. Indeed, her independence may be why she’s landed herself a spot on the Obama Enemies list while Klein, whose harshest criticisms against the Obama administration have been as vicious as a mauling by a newborn kitten, has not. The truth is that Ezra Klein is about as professional a leftist as one can be, and he has been for a very long time. It’s too bad that he’s ashamed to say so. There are a lot of talented progressives who would love to be where he is right now.

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