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The Delivery Presents – Fast and Furious versus Fat and Happy Posted: 07 May 2012 05:55 AM PDT If you rounded up all the people who have done more than desultory reporting on the Fast and Furious scandal, you could get them all in the banquet room of the average Old Country Buffet and still have plenty of space left over. I was fortunate enough to have one of those few, journalist for the Big Journalism site Mary Chastain, on Episode 145. We talked about the newest developments in the ongoing story — the word “contempt” came up a time or two — and kicked around a couple ideas we had for why this hasn’t been reported as widely or loudly as, say, Iran-Contra. In the second half, I talked about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and why I believe this year ought to be the last year it is held. We desperately need independent journalists and I’m not quite sure how that happens when, once a year, they gather among the celebrities and politicians on whom they are support to report and perform like a bunch of 12 year-old girls backstage at a Justin Bieber concert. I wasn’t explicitly political — this happens during Republican administrations as well as Democratic — but there are some obvious political considerations. How, exactly, do you “afflict the comfortable” when you are yourself one of the comfortable? The Delivery - Episode 145 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Clearing the Browser Tabs – We Bowed to Tyrants, Again Posted: 07 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT For reasons I can not imagine, our government left an advocate for freedom and decency in the hands of the Tyrants of Beijing. Chen Guangcheng quite literally begged our representatives in China to take him with them, or so the report says (though the Obama administration says differently, which means that someone has lied to us) and we did not. We left him and his family in the care of those who have already murdered countless thousands and consigned millions more to lives of oppressed misery. We can probably chalk Chen’s abandonment up to “realism”, the cowardly school of foreign policy that puts us on the side of dictators and against those who only want to lives their lives with a fraction of the liberty that is our birthright. I would be very happy if we threw every single “realist” out of public life forever and turned our vast power toward crushing every dictatorship we can find, but unfortunately, this particular way of handling our foreign relationships has a pretty solid fan base on the right as well (most notably among libertarians, who want as much freedom as they can get but don’t seem very willing to help other folks get some too). I hope we dump the realists in time to save Chen Guancheng’s life, but I doubt it. And now, links! If Arianna Huffington truly is on her way out at AOL, that’s a good thing for new media. It’s high time people learned that building an empire on free labor isn’t exactly an innovation. Ask the Egyptians. Unfortunately, Kwame Kilpatrick is not exactly a rarity among Democratic politicians. You have only to look at the Washington, DC city government to find more than a couple outright crooks. The White House has had three years to plan for the President’s first official campaign event, including a couple dozen unofficial campaign stops the administration said were official government trips, so perhaps the campaign should be just a teeny bit worried that it got an audience about the size of a Washington Wizards basketball game. Gather ’round, folks, and hear the story of Fauxcahontas and her Composite Women. Remember the days when 6% unemployment was “no cause for celebration in the streets” and 4.4% was “the worst jobs record since the Great Depression”? Good times. Good times. New Media: 1; Filthy Occupier Criminals: 0. Duane Lester did a bit of home-town journalism and just look at what happened! If you own a movie theater, know a movie theater owner, or go into a movie theater, please read this piece by John Nolte and do everything in your power to make it happen. Movie theaters should be good places to go but, for a long time, they have not been. This is a movie review. This is a whiny and pathetic political screed dressed up like a movie review.

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