The Federal Trade Commission has set out on the somewhat quixotic journey of trying to identify ways to save journalism as we know it from possible extinction.
Through a series of public forums, the last of which will take place in Washington on Tuesday, the commission has been gathering and analyzing an array of suggestions to help make the business of gathering and reporting news profitable again. A broad range of ideas — loosening antitrust statutes to allow news organizations to start charging for online content all at once; imposing a tax on iPads and other electronic devices to subsidize the cost of reporting; creating a public fund akin to AmeriCorps to pay young journalists — have been suggested.
- recent New York Times article

Economics 101 (though I'll bet my good friend West Point chimes in to correct my amateurish oversights): make something someone wants, sell it to them for the most they are willing to pay.

Funny how the New York Times complains of diminishing profits - while, simultaneously, studies show that fewer and fewer people A. appreciate the ideological bend of the New York Times, B. trust their stories as factually accurate.

While on a plane yesterday, I read the newest Newsweek and can sum it up in four words: Liberals good, conservatives bad. In that, of course, "conservatives" are rich people like the CEO of BP, and "liberals" are Elena Kagan and Barack Hussein Obama and anyone (everyone) willing to abandon reason in pursuit of an ideological - and theoretical - "better world."

With Obama's presidency, the curtain has been pulled back: the media of the 21st century spins toward the stupid. What reasonable person would believe the much-reported story that the Bush administration is at fault for the BP spill and its "clean-up"? What rational person could listen to Gibbs state, in a press briefing, "The White House is in charge of the cleanup, but BP is responsible for the cleanup"?

And what is happening in Iraq? What of the promised 8.5% unemployment? What news of the deficit? How can a news agency report so positively on a President as bumbling and stupid as this one? it has been said, Obama is one of 2 things: A genius determined to absolutely wreck this country in 4 years, or an utter moron of biblical proportions.

Economics 102: if your products sucks ass, ask the government to force consumers to pay via subsidies, labor contracts, and "bail outs"; because even if the people do not want your product, the government can still force them to pay for it.

Chihuahua state Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza blamed the two killings on racism fueled by Arizona's law.
"We believe that this killing, the second in recent days in the border between the two countries, is due to xenophobia and racism, derived from the approval of Arizona's anti-immigration law," Reyes said.

No, dumbass, racism didn't kill the 2 Mexicans, a bullet and a taser did. Both were breaking the law. And neither died in Arizona. Talk about making shit up to suit your purposes.

All those Mexicans, safely at home in their country, where they belong, Border Patrol didn't kill any of those Mexicans.

Why is the message not crystal clear: Mexicans, stay in Mexico, or Border Patrol might kill you!

Immigration problem: solved!

Dozens of passengers who were aboard the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship are suspected of having connections with global jihad-affiliated terrorist organizations, defense officials said on Tuesday, amid growing concerns that Turkish warships would accompany a future flotilla to the Gaza Strip.

According to the defense officials, the IDF has identified about 50 passengers on the ship who could have terrorist connections with global jihad-affiliated groups.

During its searches of the Mavi Marmara on Tuesday, the military also discovered a cache of bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles, as well as gas masks. On Monday morning, at least nine foreign activists were killed during the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, which was trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The group of over 50 passengers with possible terror connections have refused to identify themselves and were not carrying passports. Many of them were carrying envelopes packed with thousands of dollars in cash.

The military is working to identify the passengers and is looking into the possibility that some of them have been involved in terror attacks. Some of them are apparently known Islamic extremists.

A friend recently commented on the terrible actions of the Israeli military, killing all those helpless activists for no reason, "they are just trying to help."

I need new friends.

Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, various militant groups (cowards, those who hide in hospitals and schools, and behind women and children) threaten Israel's borders, and we - the Monday morning quarterbacks - are to scold Israel for their actions.

And since when do peace-loving humanitarian activists wield knives and pipes and shoot back.

A word to the idealistic dumbasses: Israel has a right to defend itself from terrorist organizations that, in pure cowardice, use the Palestinian people as an excuse for war. There was a time when Muslim neighbors controlled the "Palestinian territories" and they didn't give them statehood then, how humane of them now to champion a cause they had the power to fulfill - and chose not to.

To hell with the peace-loving activists; next time, just sink the damned boat.

(Were the night vision goggles and gas masks for humanitarian purposes?

Of all the gaps between elite and mass opinion in America today, perhaps the greatest is this: The elites don't really believe we're still in recession. Or maybe, they just don't care.
How else to explain the continual harping on the deficit by editorialists, centrist think tanks and the like when the nation is still enmeshed in the most serious economic downturn since the 1930s? How else to understand the growing opposition to the jobs bills Congress is set to vote on this week, particularly when nobody has identified any future engine of American economic growth save countercyclical public investment?
It's not that the American people aren't concerned about the deficit. But in poll after poll, they make clear that their No. 1 concern is jobs. Forty-seven percent of respondents to a Fox News poll this month, for instance, said they were concerned with the economy and jobs, while just 15 percent acknowledged concern over the deficit and spending. Eighty-one percent of respondents to a Pew Research Center poll from this month thought it "very important" for Congress to address the jobs situation -- more than for any other topic. "There is no significant difference across party lines," Pew reported.

As the mainstream media claims the mainstream media has turned against Obama, I somehow missed that turn. Pointing out (and nicely so) a few of the many catastrophic failures of this administration is now "turning against?" In what backwards world is discontinuing the complete avoidance of political, economic, and intellectual failures a "turning against"? At what point does noting the obvious make you an enemy?

Then, along comes this article, the "elites" don't see the recession, are they stupid? Do they not care?

How else to explain, they ask? This is how else,
1. Giving money to the unemployed never decreases unemployment.
2. Government intervention caused this, will government intervention solve it too?
3. Everything this government touches turns to shit; should they therefore touch more?
4. The age-old stupidity trick: see correlation, call it causation, no one will notice.
5. History demonstrates all too well, handing entitlements out is easy, taking them back, not so much.
6. No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.
7. When national debt approaches annual GDP, things go bad. Really bad.
8. LOOK AT GREECE! That is where this road takes us.


American people want economic growth; government expansion does not equal economic growth.

This project has been tried before, and it failed then too.

It's gonna get worse!