Permanent link to MTA daily media news

The Rich are not different from you and me… (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
…they eat ramen noodles too. Harrod’s Pot Noodles ($43) come in a hand-flocked gold leaf cup.

America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout (by Chris Hedges at TruthDig, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.
Click through to read more.  Moral decay is what destroyed the Roman Empire, and I don’t mean sexual moral decay.  We have to address this problem, and we have to address it now.  NOW NOW NOW, as Lambert would say.

Can Democrats Govern? (Political Wire)
Jonathan Chait: “George W. Bush came to office having lost the popular vote, with only 50 Republicans in the Senate… [Nonetheless,] Bush managed to enact several rounds of tax cuts that substantially exceeded those in his campaign platform, along with two war resolutions, a Medicare prescription drug benefit designed to maximize profits for the health care industry, energy legislation, education reform, and sundry other items… Obama has come into office having won the popular vote by seven percentage points, along with a 79-seat edge in the House, a 17-seat edge in the Senate, and massive public demand for change. But it’s already clear he is receiving less, not more, deference from his own party.”
Some Democrats did their best to help right wingers derail the Bill Clinton presidency.  They pushed him as far as they could to the right.  Oddly enough, many of those anti-Clinton folks were early Obama supporters.  But now Obama has his own set of Blue Dogs to deal with.  Remind me again why it’s supposed to be a good thing to have conservatives in the Democratic Party?

Will the Grassroots Drop their Anti-Blue Dog Campaigns? (by Brian Beutler at TPMDC)
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid laid the smackdown on progressive grassroots groups that are marshaling their efforts against a group of conservative Democrats. But did the grassroots get the message?… AUC has been running ads in the states of conservative Democrats urging constituents to “call congress” and “tell them to support President Obama’s budget”. Late Friday, they sent me a statement saying, “we agree with Senator Reid that Democrats should not be impeded from moving forward on this transformative budget and this is not a fight between Democrats.”…

CAF, meanwhile, declines to comment on Reid’s remarks altogether. Last week, the group featured their “Dog the Blue Dogs” campaign prominently on their website’s home page, but today it’s nowhere to be seen. For their part, MoveOn did not respond to a request for comment. They’ve been running similar ads in many of the same districts as AUC, though MoveOn calls out the targeted senators and congressmen by name.

Financial Rescue Approaches GDP as U.S. Pledges $12.8 Trillion (Bloomberg)
The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.
Why don’t they just give us (well, why don’t we lend ourselves) the $42,105?  Oh, I know.  We’re not BANKERS.

Obama and Wall Street, Part 2 (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Thomas Ferguson: [“Obama should save the banks, not the bankers.”]
Click through to watch the video.

Would thou were living at this hour (by Owen Paine at Stop Me Before I Vote Again)
“The Bank is trying to kill me — but I will kill it.” And Old Hickory did just that, unlike someone kooling it up in the White House now. President Jackson took on the financial octopus of his era, and despite the bank’s aura of invincibility, he did kill it, after getting re-elected over the bank’s peacock, Henry Clay, by a rampant 18-point margin and running off two money-stooge Treasury secretaries. He stood against it and its invisible fortune, its circle of bought men, and the London banks behind it; dared it “take your best shot,” then after the bank did its damnedest, took steady aim — bang! Made of adamantine stuff, that towering bastard.

Hey, he gave ‘em fair warning. During his first year in office, king Andy set the bank’s president — the soft-handed fork-tongued slickster Nicholas Biddle, shown left — straight: “I never trusted banks — not after I read about the South Sea bubble.” Words to live by.

Obama’s Banking Rescue: O for Opaque (by Robert Kuttner, Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect, writing at the Huffington Post)
It’s possible that the Geithner plan will “work” in the sense of re-starting the Wall Street bubble machine, this time with a limitless line of direct credit from the Federal Reserve. If that happens, it will defer an even more serious day of reckoning, as the cost of the Fed’s immense credit creation comes due. But the greater likelihood is that the plan will merely enrich some speculators, but neither bring zombie banks back to life, nor get a normal banking and credit system operating again. And then the administration will need to come back to Congress, this time with less credibility, with the economy in even worse shape, having burned through more than a trillion dollars.

We were promised unprecedented openness. In the most momentous area of policy for getting the economy functioning again for ordinary Americans, we have instead unprecedented secrecy, designed by and for Wall Street. We expected better of Obama.
Some of the Obamaphiles are finally waking up, and Joe Cannon wants apologies—from Bob Fertik of Democrats.com and from Robert Kuttner, quoted above.  Me, I want them to crawl on their bellies like reptiles and THEN beg forgiveness.

Tuesday: Reboot (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)
Nicholas Lemann, who I know nothing about, has written Mad and Madder in The New Yorker that hints at why Obama may be reluctant to nationalize the banks.  Well, *another* reason that is independent from the fact that his banker backers have him by the junk: “Bank nationalization would drive the stock market down and increase the agita of people with 401(k) plans. Moderate Democrats in Congress would further soften in their support for the Administration’s legislation.”…

So, maybe Obama’s strategy, and we have to assume their is a point to all of this even though there is no policy that we can detect, is to make sure that the middle class doesn’t lose its temper.  Plunging 401k’s would definitely make some people peevish, including moi.  However, if we descend into the semi-darkness of a Japan style “lost decade” where the already devalued 401k’s do not regain any of their value, just so that the bankers don’t have to eat their losses, that would piss me off more.  Maybe Obama figures that his chances of being a president when that happens are very slim.  Fine.  But don’t expect your picture on any stamps or money.  Your name will be “Bush”.

Hard Line on Auto Aid Puts Bailed-Out Firms on Notice (Washington Post)
The administration’s decision to oust G. Richard Wagoner Jr. sharply ratchets up its control over companies receiving government assistance in the face of criticism about a lack of accountability over billions of taxpayer dollars. The government demanded Wagoner’s departure even though it does not own a stake in the automaker… Now the president’s aggressive move against GM has left some banking executives wondering whether they are next in line.
I’ll believe it when I see it.

They all have cushions like this:
ABC News: GM’s Rick Wagoner will receive a $20 million retirement plan. (Think Progress)
ABC News reports that Rick Wagoner, outgoing CEO of General Motors, will be eligible to collect $20 million in retirement benefits from GM, the company that lost tens of billions of dollars under Wagoner’s leadership… However, the Washington Post reported this morning that Wagoner would not be leaving GM immediately, “because if he leaves the company he is entitled to a multimillion-dollar pension that the government does not want to pay.” Additionally, under the already-standing TARP agreement between GM and the Treasury Department, GM Is not allowed to pay severence fees to senior executives. “That ban does not appear to apply to retirement benefits, however.”

Are there any other ways they’ve robbed ordinary citizens?  Glad you asked:
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: A Case of Outright Theft (by Mary at The Left Coaster)
The Boston Globe says that three of Bush’s Cabinet Secretaries approved the scam to switch the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation investment model from a conservative model (15-25% in Stocks and Real Estate) to a highly risky investment model (55% in Stocks and Real Estate) in February 2008. The Cabinet Secretaries that approved this switch? Treasury, Labor and Commerce. And who was Secretary of Treasury then? Why, that would have been Mr. Paulsen, the ex-CEO of Goldman, Sachs. And why was that a problem? Because it would be hard to believe that he and his friends wouldn’t have know about what had been happening in the late stages of the mortgage bubble.

Kick-Starting Employment (by J. Bradford DeLong, thanks to Economist’s View)
Unemployment is currently rising like a rocket… In response, central banks should purchase government bonds for cash in as large a quantity as needed to push their prices up as high as possible. Expensive government bonds will shift demand to mortgage or corporate bonds, pushing up their prices. Even after central banks have pushed government bond prices as high as they can go, they should keep buying government bonds for cash, in the hope that people whose pockets are full of cash will spend more of it… In addition, governments need to run extra-large deficits. Spending … boosts employment and reduces unemployment. And government spending is as good as anybody else’s.

Finally, governments should undertake additional measures to boost financial asset prices, and so make it easier for those firms that ought to be expanding and hiring to obtain finance on terms that allow them to expand and hire.

Asian Stocks Fall, Paring March Rally, on Policy Skepticism (Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) — Asian stocks fell, paring the regional benchmark index’s rally this month, amid concern government stimulus plans worldwide will take longer than some investors expect to revive global growth.

Russia backs return to Gold Standard to solve financial crisis (The Telegraph, U.K.)
Arkady Dvorkevich, the Kremlin’s chief economic adviser, said Russia would favour the inclusion of gold bullion in the basket-weighting of a new world currency based on Special Drawing Rights issued by the International Monetary Fund. Chinese and Russian leaders both plan to open debate on an SDR-based reserve currency as an alternative to the US dollar at the G20 summit in London this week, although the world may not yet be ready for such a radical proposal.

China, Argentina to settle trade in yuan (MarketWatch)
China and Argentina have agreed to set up a 70 billion yuan ($10.24 billion) currency swap system that will enable trade between the two nations to be settled in the Chinese currency, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Monday… The agreement marks Argentina as the fifth nation to sign currency swap agreements with China following similar agreements with South Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and Indonesia. China ranks as Argentina’s second-largest trade partner.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s threat to walk out of global summit (The Times, U.K.)
President Sarkozy yesterday threatened to wreck the London summit if France’s demands for tougher financial regulation are not met… The French threat dramatically raised the temperature hours before President Obama arrives in London today. If carried through, it would ruin a summit for which Mr Brown and Mr Obama have high ambitions, believing it vital to international recovery. Mr Sarkozy, who blames the “Anglo-Saxons” for causing the economic crisis, told his ministers last week that he would leave Mr Brown’s summit “if it does not work out”.

A Rookie President (by Thomas Sowell, a conservative)
Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other Presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been President before. He has never had any position of major executive responsibility in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome. Other first-term Presidents have been governors, generals, cabinet members or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and had not spent half their few years in the senate running for President.

What is even worse than making mistakes is having sycophants telling you that you are doing fine when you are not. In addition to all the usual hangers-on and supplicants for government favors that every President has, Barack Obama has a media that will see no evil, hear no evil and certainly speak no evil. They will cheer him on, no matter what he does.
It’s a dangerous situation.

Few Blame Obama for Economy (Political Wire)
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that the number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since President Obama’s election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy. Interesting: “There is now a pronounced divergence between Democratic and Republican perceptions of the economy, a bigger partisan divide than the one that occurred 16 years ago after Bill Clinton took office. In early 1993, people in both parties were about equally likely to see the economy as improving, but now the number of Republicans who say it is souring is more than double that of Democrats.”
Yet.  Few blame him YET.

Obama’s Popularity Matters More in the Midterms (Political Wire)
Nate Silver built a statistical model that shows a president’s approval rating matters more than the economy — or the popularity of Congress itself — in determining his party’s fate in midterm congressional elections. According to past trends, Obama will need to sustain an approval rating in the range of 65 percent to avoid losing any ground in the House.

Obama signs massive wilderness bill (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama on Monday signed into law a giant public lands bill that puts former Fresno-area congressman John Krebs in rare and exalted company.

Guantanamo detainee to go free after Obama-ordered review (McClatchy)
The U.S. government on Monday agreed to release a Yemeni surgeon who reportedly treated al Qaida wounded at Tora Bora in Afghanistan under a new review ordered by President Barack Obama meant to empty the prison camps here by January 2010.

DHS secretary proposes forgiving post-Katrina, Rita loans (McClatchy)
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, acting on her recent trip to the Gulf Coast, proposed Monday that $1.27 billion in post-Katrina and Rita community disaster loans be forgiven.

DSCC: Republicans Pulled A “Hit And Run With Our Economy” (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Touching all the spots still sensitive from the Bush years, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched a new online effort on Tuesday pinning the economic malaise squarely on the shoulders of the Republican Party. Titled “They Broke It And Won’t Fix It,” the campaign is a clear reminder that the Democratic Party still sees political capital to gain from the previous administration. The accompanying video accuses Republicans of pulling a “hit and run with our economy” by following the policies of the George W. Bush.
Click through to watch the video.  I can’t get excited by these kinds of attacks.  I think we need to be educating, not attacking.

The He-Man Woman Haters Ride Again! (by myiq2xu at The Confluence)
Misogyny never dies.  From Greg Sargent: “Is the Rush Limbaugh strategy giving way to the Sarah Palin strategy? Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking…”

I guess this is part of the neverending campaign.  Obama needs to run against somebody so he can tear them down to make himself look good.  But Rush was apparently too tough for Teh Precious so he’s gonna try beating up on a woman instead.  Last time I checked the strategery of targeting the Big Fat Idiot only succeeded in pushing Limbaugh’s ratings through the roof. Let’s hope this plan is equally successful.

Murtha: ‘If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.’ (Think Progress)
Criticism of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), whom Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) calls one of the “most corrupt members of Congress,” has been mounting recently over his aggressive efforts to steer money to his district. In a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Murtha used stark language to defend himself against charges of corruption: “…‘If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district,’ Mr. Murtha said.”

In Minnesota, it’s still November (Politico)
Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts. Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance – even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.

Party Leaders Worried About Dodd (Political Wire)
Interviews with Democratic party officials and operatives in Connecticut “indicate there is deep concern back home over whether the incendiary American International Group bonuses issue has delivered a mortal blow to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT),” reports Politico. “Many of them describe a palpable fury among the party rank and file — anger that’s led some to wonder if the party would be better served with a different Democratic nominee in 2010 — though they note that, at the moment, Dodd still retains the loyalty of Democratic activists and the political class.” Meanwhile, the Hartford Courant notes that Dodd faced a “flurry of questions” yesterday about a report in the Washington Times that AIG executives solicited campaign contributions for him.

Despite McCain’s Comments, Senate GOP Not Offering Detailed Budget (by at The Note, ABC News)
Much has been made in recent days about divisions inside the House Republican caucus over how to frame the party’s opposition to President Obama’s budget. On Thursday, House Republicans did wind up offering the frame of an alternative budget — but then they were widely panned for not releasing a more detailed alternative to the Democratic proposals… According to a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate GOP’s plan remains the same: Republicans are planning to offer individual amendments to the Democratic budget but not a detailed, comprehensive budget of their own.

Quote of the Day (Political Wire)
“It was not a budget in the sense that it had numbers. It was more budget-ish.” — From the Urban Dictionary.

Rep. Paul Ryan Concedes GOP Alternative Budget Would Increase The Deficit ‘A Lot’ (Think Progress)
Last week, the House GOP presented its alternative budget proposal. Members of the media, including conservative commentators, widely panned the document for being scant on details and appearing more as “campaign-style talking points.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, has said he will release yet another budget proposal, but this time with more specifics. Though Ryan has been most critical of the deficit impact of Obama’s budget, he has been unable to assess the deficit impact of his own budget. After being repeatedly asked this weekend by Bloomberg’s Al Hunt about “how large” the deficit would be under the Republican plan, Ryan finally respond, “A lot”.

S.C. Gov. Sanford proposes stimulus deal (McClatchy)
Gov. Mark Sanford has proposed a compromise with state lawmakers over accepting $700 million in federal stimulus money – one that would require diverting state funds to pay off debt and accepting Sanford’s suggested budget savings.

Former Cheney Aide Suggests That Hersh’s Account Of ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Is ‘Certainly True’ (Think Progress)
Last month, The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh revealed in Minnesota that former vice president Cheney presided over an “executive assassination ring.” “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving,” Hersh explained. [Monday], CNN interviewed Hersh and former Cheney national security aide John Hannah. Although he expressed regret for revealing the story (calling it a “dumb-dumb”), Hersh stood by his initial statements. “I’m sorry, Wolf, I have a lot of problems with it,” he said about the assassination scheme…

Hannah replied that Hersh’s account of the assassination scheme “is not true.” Yet in the same breath, when asked about a “list” of assassination targets, Hannah echoed Hersh’s statements. Hannah said that “troops in the field” are given “authority” to “capture or kill certain individuals” who are perceived as a threat. “That’s certainly true,” he said.. Hannah didn’t directly dispute Hersh’s claim that Congress wasn’t informed about the assassinations. “It is extremely hard for me to believe,” he said.
Click through to watch the video.

GOP Convention Arm Sued For Allegedly Bilking Firm Out Of $760,000 (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
The Republican National Committee entity in charge of coordinating this past summer’s convention in Minnesota is being accused by one of its vendors of failing to pay nearly $800,000 in expenses. In a complaint filed in January 2009…, 3 Dog Consulting, Ltd., alleges that it was not paid roughly $760,000 for fundraising services it did for the Minneapolis/St. Paul 2008 Host Committee, the non-profit group tasked with overseeing the convention.

Romney Already Laying Groundwork (Political Wire)
Mitt Romney “is building toward a White House bid in 2012 by judiciously engaging and disengaging with the national debate,” the AP reports. Though Romney insists “this is a quiet time,” Republican strategist Mary Matalin says she “can easily see a second campaign — and a more successful one, at that.”

Jindal may not like volcano monitoring, but this Republican does (McClatchy)
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Monday she’ll introduce legislation this week to establish regular funding for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, just one month after fellow Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized the stimulus bill pushed by President Baack Obama for containing spending for volcano monitoring.

Alaska Air cancels Anchorage flights as Redoubt spews ash (McClatchy)
With Mount Redoubt volcano continuing to spew a steady flow of black ash into the atmosphere, Alaska Airlines announced Monday afternoon that it is once again canceling all flights in and out of Anchorage until further notice.

Some Apologies from the Obamamedia Are in Order for Falsely Accusing New Hampshire Primary Voters of Racism (by Concerned Mother at No Quarter)
Today the American Association for Public Opinion Research Ad Hoc Committee on the 2008 Presidential Primary Polling released a pdf report on the methodologies utilized by pollsters during the Democratic primaries. It is a long report, and a cursory analysis of it is available at Pollster.com. Much of the report focuses on the discrepancy between the polls and the actual vote of the New Hampshire Democratic Primary. Many variables were operative, according to the American Association for Public Opinion Research, but the Bradley Effect was NOT one of them. In other words, all those claims from the media and political pundits that New Hampshire primary voters are racist are UNFOUNDED. It was so much race baiting by the Obamamedia.
So where’s my apology, David Sirota, for calling me a racist?

Silber is Gold: Keep a Valued Voice Going (by Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque)
Arthur Silber is back, after another terrible downturn in his health which kept him from posting for almost a month. As readers here know, Arthur depends on his blog to keep body and soul together in grinding circumstances of illness and poverty (thanks to the wonderful “safety net” our society provides; but hey, at least we’re not France, right?). It’s a touch-and-go, month-to-month existence, and several weeks of enforced silence are devastating in that regard.

I know you are probably saving all your money to help those poor execs at AIG who are suffering so much without their bonuses, or maybe you’re patriotically contributing your income to the trillion-dollar nest egg that Obama and Geithner have set aside for hedge fund gamesters to squeeze even more of our blood from the toxic-paper turnip. But if you do have any spare cash left over from the administration’s noble, progressive crusade to keep rapacious elites rolling in clover, then please consider sending something to help support Silber’s work. His is a truly unique, genuinely insightful, humane and provocative vision that we can’t afford to lose.  So scoot on over there and throw some coins in the hat, so we can hear that brave voice ringing out once more.
Susie Madrak could use your help, too.

‘Secret’ Tribune/Blago Talks Revealed — But Little Information Emerges
Based on newly released Illinois government documents, the Chicago Tribune Tuesday reported new details of the secret talks now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich held with Tribune Co. on a state purchase of the landmark Wrigley Field. 
The U.S. Attorney in Chicago has accused Blagojevich of using the possibility of a state purchase of the Chicago Cubs stadium — potentially saving the financially strapped Tribune Co. $100 million or more in taxes — as leverage to force out certain Chicago Tribune editorial writers. No writers were ever fired during the period that coincided with widespread newsroom layoffs and buyouts, and the editorial board and editors have said they never felt any pressure to change their editorial stance.

Tuesday’s story by Chicago Tribune reporters Todd Lighty and Robert Becker — posted on its Web site – adds previously unreported details to the back-and-forth between Blagojevich and is aides and Tribune Co. Chairman and CEO Sam Zell and his negotiators. The Tribune obtained the records through Freedom of Information requests. But the story is no smoking gun pointing to any inappropriate actions by Tribune Co., as the reporters acknowledge: “The documents leave much unsaid, and most of the people who could fill in the blanks would not comment.”

Did we mention the media don’t care about epic gun violence? (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair at Media Matters for America)
And that the press, aside from downplaying what have now become routine, gun-related killing sprees that dot the nation, has completely walked away from even raising the issue of gun control in the wake of the rampages? The latest proof came in the wake of the carnage that unfolded in Carthage, North Carolina, on Sunday when a heavily armed suspect, Robert Stewart, entered a local retirement home and began randomly shooting patients and employees with a high-powered rifle… The thin coverage the story has received nationwide has been rather astounding… By contrast, the flood that didn’t materialize as feared in Fargo, North Dakota, over the weekend received nearly 250 mentions during the same time span. So the flood that didn’t happen got more coverage than than the killing rampage that left eight people dead in North Carolina.

Matthews calls “very correct” McCain’s false claim that “firing” of Wagoner was “unprecedented in the history of this country” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

MSNBC finding rerun is wise prime-time strategy
MSNBC will continue airing Keith Olbermann’s talk show twice each weeknight in prime time, putting on indefinite hold a search for a new 10 p.m. program. That time slot has attracted attention ever since MSNBC chief executive Phil Griffin suggested earlier this year he was on the lookout for a new show. Fans of the Internet show “The Young Turks” and of Air America’s Sam Seder have openly campaigned for their favorites… MSNBC may give up entirely on the idea of putting a new live show in that time slot, Griffin said.

Buchanan: Japanese and Koreans have taken down US auto industry “the same way the Japanese military took all those islands” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

After advocating death for AIG executives, Krauthammer rips Obama for ‘demanding’ GM CEO’s ‘head on a pike.’ (Think Progress)
Earlier this month, after the AIG bonuses controversy broke, Charles Krauthammer advocated unusual capital punishment for AIG executives, suggesting “an exemplary hanging or two” in Times Square and even a guillotine “party.” But today, after President Obama compelled GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign, Krauthammer regained his sense of civility, criticizing the administration for “demanding” Wagoner’s “head on a pike”… Like many other Fox pundits who have been railing against unions today, Krauthammer added that organized labor has “utterly destroyed the auto companies.”
Click through to watch the video.

In light of Spanish court’s considering investigation of Bush administration officials, O’Reilly asks his audience: “Should we boycott Spain?” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Hannity on auto bailout: “The administration is on a mission to hijack capitalism in favor of collectivism… The Bolsheviks have already arrived” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Beck portrays Obama, Democrats as vampires “going after the blood of our businesses,” suggests “driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Beck blasts studio lights “to show that I am such a supporter of Earth Hour” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

FNC’s Napolitano says Wagoner’s resignation is “an absolute power grab and it’s the road to fascism”, “this is Mussolini on the Potomac” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Fox News Blames Unions For Auto Companies’ Demise, Suggests Firing UAW Head (Think Progress)
When Detroit’s Big Three auto companies first came to Washington last fall to ask for bailout funds, conservatives immediately insisted the companies’ woes were the fault of the United Auto Workers (UAW). Even though the Senate Republicans effectively blocked a fair bailout deal, they pointed the finger at the UAW, falsely claiming it was “willing to make no concessions — zero.” [Monday], President Obama announced that the government will recommit to providing assistance to General Motors and Chrysler — but only if the companies presented restructured plans, including the firing of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Fox News and Fox Business was apoplectic, insisting that the UAW had never been forced to make concessions (a false claim) and that the union’s leader, Ron Gettelfinger, should be fired instead.
Click through to watch a compilation of the comments.

Howard Kurtz dictates quotes from Fox News execs (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair at Media Matters for America)
This gave us a good chuckle, reading the WashPost’s Kurtz. It’s in an article about Fox News and Kurtz faithfully goes through the pointless ritual of giving FNC bosses a chance to explain how the entire operation isn’t really a GOP movement-driven organization: “Fox executives maintain that the channel’s reporting is aggressive but not ideological. Senior Vice President Bill Shine says that ‘our reporters, people like Major Garrett, have been asking tougher questions’ than their rivals, such as scrutinizing efforts to increase White House involvement in the 2010 Census. As for the commentators, Shine says Hannity still has some liberal guests.”…

We just did a three-minute search on Nexis and found Hannity’s list of guests for the past week. We couldn’t find a single liberal. (A couple of Dems, yes. Liberals? No.) But we did see that Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter, J.C. Watts, Karl Rove, Hugh Hewitt, Newt Gingrich, Judd Gregg, Dick Morris, (radio nut) Mark Levin, and the WSJ’s Stephen Moore appeared on the show. Maybe when Hannity actually does have “some liberal guests” on his program Kurtz can publish an update.

On Fox Business, Varney predicts that government will “jack up the price of gas to make sure we buy the government car” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Fox Business contributor compares news of Wagoner resignation to “when you read Russia Today or the Moscow Times” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: “[A] lot of this stuff that’s happening right out of Rev. Wright’s sermons…and a lot of what’s going to happen in education, right out of Bill Ayers’ curriculum“ (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: “Based on what we’ve seen with General Motors and the banks, if he fails, America is saved. Barack Obama’s policies and their failure is the only hope we’ve got to maintain the America of our founding.” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh on requirements for federal aid to GM: “This is a union coup at the behest of the president. This is payback” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: “Is Hugo Chavez able to possess this man and go out and make speeches?” (video at County Fair at Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: The Man Who Ate the G.O.P. (by Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair)
In an ailing radio industry, with a graying audience and a pro-government landscape, Rush Limbaugh should be shuffling off into irrelevancy. Instead, his outrageous attacks have everyone debating whether he’s the G.O.P.’s de facto leader, while the party shapes its ideology to fit his needs.

Nonprofit organizations seek federal stimulus funds (McClatchy)
The lure of millions of dollars of federal stimulus and recovery money drew nearly 200 nonprofit representatives to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on Monday.
EVERYbody wants a handout.

AHIP and Blue Cross: We will treat everyone fairly if we can define fair (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Health insurers pull a fast one in proposed reform[:] “The industry says it will treat all people fairly in return for a government requirement that everyone has to buy their product. But they want to charge different prices for different levels of coverage… et if you read the fine print in their plan, it turns out that they’re reserving the right to charge different prices for different levels of coverage — a practice that would effectively keep us where we are, with sick (or potentially sick) people paying more for insurance.”

To keep workers, Kansas companies cut everyone’s salary (McClatchy)
Everybody at Pretech Corp. has taken a pay cut — but all the employees are working.

States aren’t spending funds to help rescue workers talk (McClatchy)
Nearly $1 billion intended to improve the ability of emergency workers to talk to each other has been sitting in the federal Treasury for 18 months.

Idaho Teacher Sells Advertising Space on Tests
In a cash-strapped Idaho high school where signs taped near every light switch remind the staff to save electricity, an enterprising teacher has struck a sponsorship deal with a local pizza shop: Every test, handout and worksheet he passes out to his students reads MOLTO’S PIZZA 14″ 1 TOPPING JUST $5 in bright red, inch-high letters printed along the bottom of every page.
Why won’t we provide the supplies necessary for educating the next generation?

KFC wants to sponsor pothole repairs
KFC, the fried chicken franchise, is offering itself as a corporate sponsor for pothole repair. An actor dressed as KFC founder Colonel Sanders and a road repair group got started this week in the franchise’s hometown of Louisville, Ky., filling up hundreds of holes. Many of the repairs are decorated with a white stencil saying the spot was “Re-freshed by KFC” — a play on KFC’s ad campaign stressing the freshness of their chickens. KFC spokesman Russell Dyer said the crew is using “regular asphalt,” not day-old biscuits. The franchise has issued an offer to mayors of cities nationwide, asking them to describe their street’s state of disrepair, with the intent of doing repairs in five cities.
Why won’t we provide the funds necessary to repair our streets?

Media Matters for America headlines

• Ignoring AIG, Fannie, and Freddie, Wash. Times editorial labeled Wagoner’s departure “unprecedented”

• Fox News’ La Jeunesse ignores effective tax rate to claim U.S. corporate tax “second highest in the world”

• Fox Nation says “yes” to “biased media” — calls Frank and Dodd a “[d]angerous duo”

• Fox & Friends graphic falsely claims, “Bill lets government set your salary”

• LA Times, Dobbs uncritically forward McCain’s false claim that Wagoner’s departure was “unprecedented”

• Boehlert: Norm Coleman’s a sore loser. Why won’t the press say so?

• Special Report allowed Fiorina to attack Obama without noting her role with McCain campaign

• Media promote claims of global cooling despite overwhelming consensus to the contrary

N. Korea to Indict Detained American Reporters
North Korea will indict two American reporters it detained this month on suspicion of illegally entering the country. “The illegal entry of U.S. reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by evidence and their statements,” North Korea’s official state news agency reported.

China rejects computer spy claims as “ghost of Cold War”
China on Tuesday rejected a report suggesting it may be involved in using computer networks to spy on exiled Tibetans and foreign governments, accusing its authors of being possessed by “the ghost of the Cold War.”

E.U. Poised to Establish Telecommunications Regulator
Starting in 2010, the new agency, together with the European Commission, will be able to reverse policies made by national regulators in E.U. countries.

High Court Won’t Consider Va. Decision That Barred Anti-Spam Law (American Constitution Society)
The U.S. Supreme Court today turned away Virginia’s request to review a lower court decision that invalidated the state’s anti-spam law. The Virginia Supreme Court concluded that the anti-spam law violated the First Amendment because it also prohibited political and religious messages from being sent via e-mail. The law in Virginia v. Jaynes was intended to bar unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Study: Enforcement spurs rise in Web sex arrests
More people have been arrested in recent years for sexually soliciting youths online, but the sharp increase comes from better enforcement, and the Internet remains a relatively safe social environment, researchers said in a new study.

Federal judge blocks charges in Pa. ’sexting’ case
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three northeastern Pennsylvania teenagers who appeared in racy photos that turned up on classmates’ cell phones.

Google Publishing Settlement Would Re-Write Nation’s Copyright System (American Constitution Society)
The Volokh Conspiracy’s Jonathan Adler notes recent commentary exploring a legal settlement that if approved by a federal court, would grant Google vast power to control digital publishing rights. Lynn Chu, with Writers Representatives LLC, maintains that if the legal framework were approved by a federal court, it “would permit Google to post out-of-print books for reading, sales, institutional licensing, ad sales, and other publishing exploitations,” by the online search engine giant. Chu notes that the settlement is fashioned between Google and only a “handful of authors and publishers,” but would cover every author and publisher in the nation…

Chu says the court should reject the Google settlement: “We already have a good system. It’s called the system of private property and free contract, designed for dispersed, autonomous individuals – not command-and-control centers. The U.S. Constitution grants authors small monopolies in their own copyrights. Author market power is talent-based and individual, not collective. The class action seeks to wipe all this out – just for Google. But U.S. law does not grant any single publisher monopoly power to herd all of us into its list.”

Check out the winners of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards
This year’s top prize, the IRE Medal, was given to WWL-TV in New Orleans for its investigation of a city-run housing nonprofit that falsely claimed to have fixed homes in need of repair after Hurricane Katrina, and the contractors who pocketed the money without doing the work.

Strib’s best journalism goes to paying customers first
Editor Nancy Barnes says the Strib wants to let print customers know that they’re getting something that others aren’t; thus, investigative projects, deeply reported nonbreaking news stories, and “beautifully written feature stories” won’t be rushed to the web. This is an experiment, notes the editor.

Bring Back Yellow Journalism (by Jack Shafer at Slate)
I wish our better newspapers availed themselves of some of the techniques of yellow journalism. Being rambunctious to the extreme, yellow journalism is misunderstood. At its best, yellow journalism was terrific, and at its worst, it really wasn’t all that bad.
I guess Shafer never watches Fox News or reads the Weekly Standard.

MIT cops suspended for dumping student newspapers
The two officers didn’t like the story about a colleague getting arrested for trafficking in prescription painkillers, so they put 300 papers in the recycling bin.

“This morning, I felt like something was missing,” says Detroit newspaper reader
Nancy Nester, 51, who has subscribed to both Detroit papers for four years, says “there was this feeling of emptiness” on Monday when there was no home delivery. She didn’t even bother to pick up the condensed print versions that were offered free. “I don’t have time to stop at the store.”

Auto Industry News Hits Just as Detroit Papers Begin Limited Delivery
Under a new distribution model, Gannett’s Detroit Free Press and MediaNews’ Detroit News this week limited their home delivery to Thursday and Friday, while only the Free Press arrives Sunday.

Philly newspaper union blasts execs’ “shocking” bonuses
The Inquirer and Daily News union says it now regrets encouraging members last summer to postpone their $25 raise. “Surely by December [when the bonuses to three senior execs were awarded], Philadelphia Media Holdings knew the company would soon declare bankruptcy, as it did last month, so the year-end cash rewards are shocking,” says the union.

NYT to Eliminate City Section
The New York Times plans to eliminate several weekly sections, including its stand-alone City Section, as well as possibly the regional weeklies in New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, and Connecticut, and the Friday Escapes section. The timeline is unclear, but a staffer said that City has only four issues left.

Hartford Courant, 2 TV stations combine operations
Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co. said Monday that it is bringing together the operations of its newspaper and two television stations in Hartford, Conn. Richard Graziano, senior vice president and general manager of Tribune Co.’s WTIC-TV and WTXX-TV who also oversees Tribune Co. stations in Philadelphia and Washington, has been named publisher of the Hartford Courant, effective immediately.

The only US newspaper reporter in Havana is leaving Cuba
Tribune’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel is closing its Havana bureau and returning reporter Ray Sanchez to Fort Lauderdale.

Sun-Times Media Group Files For Bankruptcy Protection (Paid Content)
Chicago’s other big newspaper publisher, The Sun Times Media Group, has filed for bankruptcy protection… The company says it will continue to operate its 59 newspapers, including The Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun Times has been going through a great deal of turmoil lately, even by newspaper industry standards. In January, the company’s board was ousted by dissident shareholder, as The Sun Times’ stock price hovered around 8 cents.  The company’s last trade on March 30 was for 5 cents.

Jeremy Halbreich, chairman and interim CEO cited the “deteriorating economic climate, coupled with a significant, pending IRS tax liability dating back to previous management,” as the reason for the Chapter 11 filing. He said the company expects to exit the restructuring process sometime this year. In Feb. ‘08, The Sun Times had hoped to put itself up for sale or find a joint venture as it attempted a major turnaround. But none of that came to pass

Charter files for prearranged bankruptcy
Charter Communications Inc. on Friday filed for a prearranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy to get relief from its creditors, as the nation’s fourth-largest cable operator strives to keep its head above water and still compete with phone companies and satellite TV providers.

More Layoffs, Extended Furloughs At ‘Tampa Tribune,’ Siblings 
Media General Inc.’s Florida Communications Group (FCG) on Monday laid off 53 employees at The Tampa Tribune and its media siblings in the market.

“The Soloist” has a grim state-of-the-newspaper subtext
The average moviegoer probably won’t be touched by it, but people in the news business will be. “I know I was,” writes Roger Moore. “I left a preview of ‘The Soloist’ last night, sat in my car, punched the CD changer to a Beethoven piano concerto and fought off the tears.”

The AP Daily without the AP (by Jeff Jarvis)
Amazing that even the free Metro papers – which were pretty much the Associated Press freeze-dried onto paper – are dropping the AP. Even though they’re nothing but a bus-read, they don’t want – or can no longer afford – commodity content.

Detroit Media Partnership in E-reader Deal with Plastic Logic
Detroit Media Partnership, the joint operating agency of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, and Plastic Logic, in Cambridge, England and Mountain View, Calif., have announced a partnership for a digital content delivery program using the Plastic Logic reader. To be generally available in early 2010 following pilot projects later this year, the electronic reader features a large, thin, plastic display about the size of an 8.5 x 11-inch pad of paper and weighing less than many print magazines. The e-reader is based on the company’s plastic electronics technology and intuitive touch screen interface, among other as-yet-unannounced features.

The Plastic Logic reader will be offered for purchase or lease to the Detroit dailies’ subscribers as an alternative to paper delivery. The Detroit newspapers will also be among the first publications to test the new e-reader later this year. “Our goal is to provide a superior digital reading experience for users while also offering a versatile new delivery platform for the publishing industry,” Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta said at yesterday’s announcement.

Life’s Revival Continues; Time Inc. JV With Getty Images Goes Emerges From Beta (Paid Content)
Time Inc.’s Life magazine gets its full rebirth as a website today, as the company’s joint venture with Getty Images comes out of beta with 7 million images… The site, which is being sponsored entirely by Rolex for its first month, is organized along 1,000 galleries. “Curation” is Life.com’s underlying philosophy. Blau sought to emphasize that that the stress would be on professional photographers and content; the only real user-generated involvement would be celebrity curators like talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. As for Life’s other partnership with Google, an image archive launched in November, Blau also notes the key differences. “Google’s about image storing,” he said. “Life.com is about image finding… We deliberately wanted to make sure that this wouldn’t be seen as an ‘archival’ site. The photos are updated constantly and reflect the news, such as the recent flood fears on the midwest. It draws back to what the magazine originally was: capturing what was happening, but through photos, not text.”

While other sites struggle with paid content, Blau and company have that issue nailed down as well. The site will make most of its money from advertising—in addition to sponsorships like Rolex, within the next three- to six months Blau wants to have galleries that are specially sponsored by marketers. It will also have a major e-commerce function, whereby users create their own photo books from site images and then order them online.

Life.com

Esquire’s Latest Cover Stunt: A Mix-and-Match Flip Book
Meet President Barack George Timberlake

Forbes To Hand Out More Pink Slips; Second Round Of Cuts Targets 50 (Paid Content)
Forbes Media is planning on cutting another 50 jobs, MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka reports… The business mag has already slashed more than 60 jobs since last fall. Those job losses were attributed to the two phase process of combining the digital and print staffs. With that process completed about three months ago, it appears that this latest round can only be laid at the feet of the foundering economy.

It’s official: Internet surpasses radio.
Radio’s $100 million lead in 2007 evaporated last year as internet revenues grew 11% to $23.4 billion. That’s $3.9 billion more than radio. The internet is now the third largest ad-supported medium, behind television and print. But radio is fighting back, targeting online ad growth. The RAB says off-air dollars accounted for 9% of last year’s radio revenue.

Senate joins the royalty fight.
Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have introduced a resolution which, like its House counterpart, opposes any new royalty-based fee on radio. The effort comes as roughly 500 local broadcasters descend on Capitol Hill this week.

Radio One wants Sirius XM spectrum.
The FCC is trying to figure out how it will distribute 12 satellite channels set-aside for outside programmers as a condition for last year’s Sirius-XM merger. Radio One has a suggestion on how those channels should be divvied-up.

Local TV, Radio Face Even Tougher 2009
SNL Kagan Forecasts Ad-Revenue Slides of at Least 15%

CNN in Third Place in Prime Time for First Time
CNN is poised to finish March third in the prime-time weeknight ratings behind Fox News Channel and MSNBC, the first time this has ever happened for the channel that pioneered the cable news genre nearly three decades ago.

Disney, YouTube Announce Clips Deal For ESPN, Disney/ABC (by Staci D. Kramer at Paid Content)
It’s official—Disney Media Networks and YouTube have announced the revenue-sharing short-form deal we first reported last night. The deal with the Google video portal covers the launch of multiple ad-supported U.S.-only channels featuring content from ESPN and the Disney/ABC Television Group. Previews are up now; the ESPN channel will launch mid-April, ABC in mid-May.

—Full episodes still on the table…
—We were told emphatically that Disney would control the ad inventory…
—The ESPN video player, which share DNA with the ABC player, will be integrated into the ESPN channel and “will anchor a wide variety of exciting sports content and highlights” on YouTube Sports. But some ESPN content will be available through YouTube’s player…
—It’s not in the release but I’ve confirmed (again) that ABC and ESPN will be able to link back to long-form content on their own sites.

Microsoft Encarta Officially Succumbs to Wikipedia (Mashable)
Do you remember what came in between printed encyclopedias and Wikipedia? For many, the answer is Microsoft Encarta, which was distributed starting in the 90s via CD-ROM and more recently on the Web via MSN. Today, Microsoft announced that it’s discontinuing Encarta later this year, offering symbolic confirmation that Wikipedia is the world’s definitive reference guide… As PaidContent points out, the crowd-edited Wikipedia boasts 2.7 million entries in English versus just 42,000 for Encarta. Need further confirmation of why Wikipedia is simply a better model? News of Encarta’s discontinuation has already reached the product’s entry on Wikipedia.

Climate Culture Employs Social Media to Turn America’s Universities Green (Mashable)
Social media has been a great tool for spreading awareness about environmental and green issues. Most recently, social media was used to spread the word about Earth Hour and the cost of electricity use. Once again, social media is being used to make an impact on the environment, this time through college campuses across the U.S. Climate Culture, a green tech startup that helps people manage their energy usage and carbon footprint, and SmartPower, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting efficient and clean energy, have teamed up to officially launch the America’s Greenest Campus contest, which pits college campuses against each other to reduce their carbon footprint.

Mydeco: An All-in-One Tool for Home Design and Shopping (Mashable)
Mydeco is a comprehensive portal for home decorations and design. In terms of its shopping features, it has the essentials for every room of the house: everything from bedding to cutlery is available for purchase. Purchases are not made on Mydeco; they are completed through third-party vendors such as the UK’s B&Q (home improvement supplies). What makes the website stand out, however, is its vast array of tools for designing the perfect home, as well as its dedicated community.

20 Twitter Badges to Show Off Your Tweets (by Sean P. Aune at Mashable)
There are a number of ways to promote your Twitter account. You can add yourself to one of the many growing Twitter directories, advertise your brand, or, as I’ll discuss in this post, feature a badge with your Twitter information on your website, blog, or even in your email. Here are 20 embeddable badges and widgets that you can customize to include your tweets and, in some cases, those of your friends.

Daily Beast Still Has No Sales Staff
In the nearly six months since the Beast launched, the site has flirted with ads, running a number in the fall and some sponsored sections in February. But it hasn’t made a lasting commitment to an advertiser. For the past month, the site has remained chaste, carrying no ads at all.

Web ad revenue grew in 4Q but slower than in past
U.S. Internet advertising revenue climbed in the fourth quarter in spite of the poor economy, but the growth rate was sluggish compared to previous years, according to an analysis released Monday.

Reckitt-Benckiser to Shift $20 Million to Web From TV
Decision Driven by Need for More-Efficient Ad Rates

Mobile Ad Platform AdMob Launches iPhone Download Exchange (Mashable)
The AdMob exchange program works just like an advertising campaign – members of the network have ad spots for displaying either paid advertising or ads that are through the iPhone Download Exchange. AdMob already has over 1000 iPhone applications in its network, giving it a good starting point for its program. It’s also a smart program – it does not advertise applications that the user already has installed, targets based on geography and device (so iPod touch users don’t get apps that are only for iPhones), and generates detailed reports on the impression and success of the campaign. Members of the AdMob network can also control how often ads are either paid ads or Download Exchange ads.

Microsoft unveils partners for applications store
Microsoft Corp has signed up multiple software partners for its upcoming cellphone software marketplace, including Web music service Pandora, game publisher Electronic Arts Inc and social site Facebook.

Unpaid bills? Good luck starting future laptops
As wireless carriers begin to subsidize computers that come with wireless Internet access, they’re faced with a quandary: What do they do if the buyer stops paying his bills?… LM Ericsson AB, the Swedish company that makes many of the modems that go into laptops, announced Tuesday that its new modem will deal with this issue by including a feature that’s virtually a wireless repo man. If the carrier has the stomach to do so, it can send a signal that completely disables the computer, making it impossible to turn on.

Small-screen browsers get bigger role
At CTIA, the wireless industry’s trade show this week, expect chatter about the mobile browser “wars,” with Opera Mini, long popular in Europe, expected soon to have more of a presence in the United States and a test mobile version of Firefox underway.

Google Starts Venture Capital Fund (Mashable)
Google has announced Google Ventures, a venture capital fund that “seeks to discover and grow great companies” in a “broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care.”… [T]he official site claims that the fund is “able to invest amounts ranging from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars.” In other words, anything goes, and Google probably won’t be cheap if they see a good opportunity. On the other hand, Google has always been somewhat careful, acquisition-wise, so don’t expect Google Ventures to be burning money; as they say, their goal is to “build great companies” but also to generate “long term financial return.”

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Photo of the Day (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)

America the Tarnished (by Paul Krugman)
[A]n article in [Saturday’s] Times about the response President Obama will receive in Europe was titled “English-Speaking Capitalism on Trial.” Now, in fairness we have to say that the United States was far from being the only nation in which banks ran wild. Many European leaders are still in denial about the continent’s economic and financial troubles, which arguably run as deep as our own — although their nations’ much stronger social safety nets mean that we’re likely to experience far more human suffering. Still, it’s a fact that the crisis has cost America much of its credibility, and with it much of its ability to lead. And that’s a very bad thing.

The financial crisis has had many costs. And one of those costs is the damage to America’s reputation, an asset we’ve lost just when we, and the world, need it most.

No Givens As Obama Steps Onto World Stage (Washington Post)
[I]f the U.S. president thought his popularity would cause foreign governments to fall quickly into line behind a new American leadership, experts warn, he could be in for a rude awakening. The German government has resisted calls to deploy more combat troops to Afghanistan. Russia is pushing back against a NATO missile defense system in Poland. And the Czech prime minister last week described the U.S. plans for global economic recovery as the “road to hell.”

Rising Powers Challenge U.S. on Role in I.M.F. (New York Times)
The Obama administration has made fortifying the I.M.F. one of its primary goals for the meeting of the Group of 20, which includes leading industrial and developing countries and the European Union. But China, India and other rising powers seem to believe that the made-in-America crisis has curtailed the ability of the United States to set the agenda. They view the Western-dominated fund as a place to begin staking their claim to a greater voice in global economic affairs.

UN backs new new global currency reserve (The Sunday Telegraph, U.K.)
A UNITED Nations panel of economists has proposed a new global currency reserve that would take over the US dollar-based system used for decades by international banks. The proposal follows the controversial call by China’s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, to create a new world currency reserve to replace the greenback as part of an overhaul of global finance. China and many developing countries blame the global crisis on US mishandling of over-extended mortgage loans and investments in them.

With the US also borrowing trillions of dollars, it risks hyperinflation, which would considerably weaken the dollar. An independently administered reserve currency could operate without conflicts posed by the US dollar and keep commodity prices more stable.

London protesters march in 1st of many G20 rallies (AP)
Thousands of people marched through European cities Saturday to demand jobs, economic justice and environmental accountability, kicking off six days of protest and action planned in the run-up to the G20 summit… In London, more than 150 groups threw their backing behind the “Put People First” march. Police said around 35,000 attended the demonstration, snaking their way across the city toward Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. Protest organizers said they wanted leaders from the world’s top 20 economies to adopt a more transparent and democratic economic recovery plan.

I’m mad as hell, and I’m gonna… talk about it (by Michael J. Smith at Stop Me Before I Vote Again)
The New York Times today published some ruminations – by a professor — of sociology! — at Columbia – on the absence of insurrection in America today. The sense of a sweaty brow relievedly wiped was palpable… “Fury, after all, can manifest itself in more productive ways than urban rioting or cable-TV ranting. Fury can inspire real protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, even good old-fashioned, town-hall meetings. That’s how we’ll recover our public life and perhaps help one another through this crisis — storming angrily into the streets and then, once we’re out there, actually talking to one another.”

People might get mad. They might even go out into the street! — It’s been known to happen. But with any luck at all, maybe they’ll just… talk.

Here’s someone willing to do more than just talk:
Huffington Site Starts Project to Investigate the Economy (AP)
The new group would have an initial budget of $1.75 million, estimated to be enough for 10 staff journalists who would coordinate coverage with freelancers.

Is Obama wrong? (by Joan Walsh, Salon)
I’ve had [a feeling] for a while, that the Democrats can’t get us out from under this mess until they are forced to reckon with their role in creating it. Every time I see Chuck Schumer on television pretending to be a populist scourge of Wall Street, I remember his role in blocking higher taxes for hedge fund managers and repealing Glass-Steagall. I can’t help thinking that Tim Geithner is too close to the industry that took over — and took down — the economy to tame it. A large part of the Democrats’ resurgence in the last four years, ironically, has been its success raising money from Wall Street, which undermines its populist street cred at a time like this. Fortunately for the party, Republicans are just as compromised, so it’s not too late to for Democrats to take leadership in bucking the financial oligarchy and develop real solutions to the financial crisis.
Salon could take a lead role, too, Joan.

And these folks are more than just talk, too:
Our plan: Real structural change of Wall Street (A New Way Forward)
DECENTRALIZE: Any bank that’s “too big to fail” means that it’s too big for a free market to function. The financial corporations that caused this mess must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place — new banks, managed by new people. As Wall St. corporations grew bigger and bigger until they were “too big to fail,” they also became so politically powerful that they led to distorted and unfair policies that served companies, not citizens. Its not enough to try to patch up the current system. We demand serious reform that fixes the root problems in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation. And we demand that the reform happen in an open and transparent manner.
Some of the sponsors are Joe Trippi and William Greider.

What to Watch For In Obama’s Financial Sector Reforms (by Ian Welsh)
Is Obama going to regulate Collateralized Debt Swaps like insurance, meaning that you can’t insure something if you can’t pay it back and you have to use government mandated tables, make sure there’s insurable interest, not allow over-insurance and so on?… He may do some of it, but I doubt he’ll do all of it.
Is he going to limit leverage properly, by which I mean not just not allowing leverage rations above 10:1, for anyone, but not allowing leverage on leverage – not allowing someone to use a leveraged asset to leverage off of… Maybe, maybe not.
Is he going to properly regulate securitization? By which I mean not allowing securitization of already securitized assets, full reform of the ratings agencies so they have no incentive to over-rate securities, not allowing collateralized assets to have higher ratings than the underlying securities, and not allowing financial innovation which is not approved by regulators? Will Obama do this?  We’ll see.
Move to highly progressive taxation. If he doesn’t do this executives will always have an incentive to create bubbles because they will be able to make so much money in a few years that it doesn’t matter what happens to their companies in the long term. Will Obama do this?  No…
Is he going to break up the “too big to fail” banks and other financial firms so that in the future failed financial firms can just be put into receivership and can’t hold the economy bankrupt?… Don’t make me laugh.
Click through for much, much more.

So what do you do when you don’t want to do what makes sense to un-bought economists?  Why, exaggerate, of course!
8000 banks (by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire)
[T]he Newsweek piece on Paul Krugman … irked me: “Krugman’s suggestion that the government could take over the banking system is deeply impractical, Obama aides say. Krugman points to the example of Sweden, which nationalized its banks in the 1990s. But Sweden is tiny. The United States, with 8,000 banks, has a vastly more complex financial system. What’s more, the federal government does not have anywhere near the manpower or resources to take over the banking system.” Has anyone talked about taking over 8000 banks? In point of fact, the FDIC has put an awful lot of smaller banks in receivership. Somehow, it has found the manpower.

Tom Toles

In case you can’t read the blurb at the bottom, it says,
“But still big enough to fund a bailout.”

William Greider on the Geithner Plan (Bill Moyers Journal, PBS)
Greider worries the Obama administration won’t seize the chance for change without pressure from citizens. Referring to the stimulus package and Secretary Geithner’s new bailout proposal, Greider tells Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL, that President Obama “does seem absolutely committed to restoration of the old order.”

Krugman and Newsweek (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
The Times’ liberal columnist is on the cover this week, with a provocative story headlined: “OBAMA IS WRONG: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman.” It’s about Krugman’s criticism of Obama’s economic policies made from the left… During the Bush years, Krugman, from his same perch on the pages of Times’ opinion pages, waged about as vocal a campaign as humanly possible to warn readers and the country about what he considered to be the perilous policy decisions the Bush administration was embracing, and what the disastrous results for America would be…

But now a Democrat is in the Oval Office, Krugman is still hitting the president from the left, and suddenly the Beltway press thinks Krugman’s work is fascinating and newsworthy. Trust us, it is. (For years he’s been our pick as the country’s premier columnist.) We just think everyone would have been better off if the press had paid this much attention to Krugman’s work between, say, 2002 and 2006.

The magazine cover effect (by Paul Krugman)
I’ve long been a believer in the magazine cover indicator: when you see a corporate chieftain on the cover of a glossy magazine, short the stock. Or as I once put it (I’d actually forgotten I’d said that), “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first put on the cover of Business Week.” There’s even empirical evidence supporting the proposition that celebrity ruins the performance of previously good chief executives. Presumably the same effect applies to, say, economists. You have been warned.

Obama Officials Think Krugman Is Naive: Newsweek’s Evan Thomas (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, who has the big cover story on the rather prickly relationship between the White House and Paul Krugman, offered a rather surprising insight into the relationship between the two. Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, the longtime magazine scribe said that the Obama administration is not “too crazy about Krugman”… “You know, I think the administration is trying to ignore Krugman, quite frankly,” Thomas went on. “But they can’t entirely because he has a big voice…” This is telling, not least because Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, was more prescient about some of the current financial and economic woes than key members of the Obama brain-trust.

KRUGMAN OPENS THE OVERTON WINDOW… (by dday at Political Animal, the Washington Monthly)
[Y]ou don’t have to agree with everything Krugman says – I’ve seen some very good critiques of things he’s said recently. But he is a serious thinker and this is his area of expertise, and he performs an important function. It’s an odd quirk of fate that Krugman has as big a megaphone as he does, and so using it to put pressure on the Obama Administration from the left does several things: 1) provides a counter-weight to the conservative critiques of the President, which are usually so nutty that they pale in comparison to reasoned dissent, 2) forces Obama to at least debate the merits of his proposals rather than dismiss all critics, and most important, 3) gives Obama space on the left to put out an more progressive agenda than otherwise.
But those of us trying to pressure Obama from the left are considered the bad guys by many of the so-called progressive blogs.

Uncle Sam’s Hedge Fund (by Robert Samuelson)
Call it Uncle Sam’s hedge fund. The rescue of the American financial system proposed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is, in all but name, a gigantic hedge fund. The government would lend vast sums to private investors to enable them to buy loss-ridden assets at discounts from banks with the prospect of making sizable profits. If that’s not a hedge fund, what would be? The hope is that the $14 trillion U.S. banking system would expand lending if it could get rid of many of the lousy securities and loans already on its books…

[S]ucceed or fail, Geithner’s plan illuminates a fascinating irony. “Leverage” — borrowing — helped create this mess. Now it’s expected to get us out.

Geithner Says Some Banks to Need `Large Amounts’ of Aid, Warns Against Tax  (Bloomberg)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said some financial institutions will need substantial government aid, while warning against any attempt to tax investors who join a federal program to buy tainted assets from banks.

Feds declare GM, Chrysler not viable, refuse more aid (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama on Monday will reject requests for almost $22 billion in new taxpayer bailout money for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, saying the car makers have failed to take steps to ensure their viability.

G.M. Chief Forced Out as Chrysler Gets Merger Deadline (New York Times)
The White House asked Rick Wagoner to resign and instructed Chrysler to form a partnership with Fiat as a condition for new aid to be detailed Monday.

White House Asks GM CEO to Quit (by Alegre)
So I guess we can expect the White House to start demanding the resignation of all those Wall Street CEOs in exchange for bailouts and loans then, right?  Maybe even demand that those “retention bonuses” be returned to the taxpayers? Or does the White House have a two different sets of rules – one for Main Street, and another for Wall Street?
You know the answer to that question, of course.

Asian Stocks, US Futures Decline Amid Renewed Bank Concerns (Bloomberg)
Asian stocks and U.S. index futures slumped as the Obama administration warned that some banks will need more government aid and bankruptcy may be the best option for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Good capitalism, bad capitalism (by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire)
“Industrial capitalism” refers to the manufacture of stuff – cars, shoes, toothbrushes, condoms, TVs, pig iron. Stuff. “Finance capitalism” refers to stocks, bonds, financial instruments. Numbers. Concepts. Abstract intangibles. Anti-stuff, if you will. Financial capitalists got us into our current mess. You can’t blame the industrial capitalists, and you can’t blame labor (unless you’ve been programmed by ideology to do so). Obama, like Bush, clearly loves the financial capitalist and hates the industrial capitalist…

In the 20s, fascist economic theorists such as Gottfried Feder posited a simple argument: Industrial capital is good, finance capital is bad. Today, Obama and Geithner argue the exact reverse: Finance capital is good, industrial capital is bad. Both ideologies are dangerous because neither seeks balance. Fascism could not destroy this country. Obamaism might just manage the trick.

Shutting Detroit Down (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Billionaire bankers (and their investors) walk away from the table with their pockets stuffed with taxpayer cash while members of the auto workers union are told they’ll have to sacrifice even more – in this case, the Obama administration wants the companies to get rid of “old liabilities” – i.e. retiree pensions. (You know, while bankers complain about having to sell the house in the Hamptons.) No, Obama’s not talking about the insolvent banks. He’s talking about Detroit. Could he make it any more obvious that the wealthy are a protected class?

Obama: bankruptcy for Big Auto makes it easier to clear away “old liabilities” (by lambert at Corrente)
So, it really is about fucking the unions over, isn’t it? “‘Unlike a liquidation, where a company is broken up and sold off, or a conventional bankruptcy, where a company can get mired in litigation for several years, a structured bankruptcy process — if needed here — would be a tool to make it easier for General Motors and Chrysler to clear away old liabilities,’ the government said in a fact sheet [snort] outlining a ‘surgical bankruptcy’ of 30 days or less.” Because we know what those “old liabilities” are, don’t we?

The secret war against American workers (by Robert Eshelman, Salon)
In some cases, under the guise of “recession” pressure, they may be waging a secret war against their own workers, using even the most innocuous transgressions of workplace rules as the trigger for firings — and so, of course, putting the fear of God into those who remain. In this way, company payrolls are not only being reduced by mass layoffs, but workers are being squeezed for ever greater productivity in return for lower wages, worse hours and fewer benefits. The weapon of choice is the specter of unemployment, a kind of death by a thousand (or a million) cuts.
That war has been going on for most of my working life, Mr. Eshelman.

Fox’s Kilmeade begrudgingly admits Japan’s national health care gives their auto companies an advantage. (Think Progress)
This morning on Fox and Friends, host Brian Kilmeade admitted that, despite conservatives’ repeated claims to the contrary, United Auto Workers’ salaries are in line with workers’ salaries at foreign auto plants. The real problem, Kilmeade said, was health care costs. At first, he claimed that Japanese car companies would face those same “legacy costs” in 40 years, but then acknowledged Japan’s “nationalized health care” will spare them those costs.
Click through to watch the video.

Mathmagical Formulas (by myiq2xu at The Confluence)

Bank of America to use bailout money to increase bankster’s salaries by 70% (by lambert at Corrente)
Looks like that meeting with Obama was very productive! “…Bank of America Corp. plans to increase some investment bankers’ salaries by as much as 70 percent following the takeover earlier this year of Merrill Lynch & Co., people familiar with the proposal said… ‘[W]e believe it is responsible, and consistent with the emerging public consensus, that a greater percentage of overall compensation come from fixed base salary.’…” No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re not getting it. Here’s the “emerging public consensus”: What we want is for banksters to be paid less money…. PAID LESS MONEY.

Regulators see new role for Fannie, Freddie: report (Reuters)
The regulator of U.S. government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is looking at ways the two firms might help finance small mortgage banks hobbled by a dearth of credit, the Wall Street Journal reported. The WSJ, quoting a Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) spokeswoman, said the regulator is exploring options through which the two mortgage finance companies might help revive the market for warehouse loans – a key source of funds to mortgage banks.

Dirty bomb threat looms over G20 meet (Times of India)
[J]ust days before world leaders gather here for the Group of 20 meeting — a warning was given this week that a so-called dirty bomb on a British city is more likely than ever. The government alert accompanied the launch of a major new anti-terrorist strategy that encourages ordinary citizens to offer Britain an additional layer of security. The new approach aims to train some 60,000 retail, hotel, and service industry staff to recognize terrorist threats.
Hey, don’t forget the meter readers and repairmen who go into people’s houses.  We want them reporting our neighbors’ pornography preferences, too.

Obama’s domino theory (by Juan Cole, Salon)
President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting “al-Qaida” in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories.

Tom Hayden on March 27, 2009
Don’t Go There Mr. President! (by Tom Hayden, writing in The Nation)
17,000 or 21,000 more US troops will not protect Americans against Al Qaeda attacks. The Obama plan instead will accelerate any plans Al Qaeda commanders have for attacking targets in the United States or Europe. The alternative for Al Qaeda is to risk complete destruction, an American objective that has not been achieved for eight years. A terrorist attack need not be planned or set in motion from a cave in Waziristan. The cadre could already be underground in Washington or London. The real alternative for President Obama should be to maintain a deterrent posture while immediately accelerating diplomacy to meet legitimate Muslim goals, from a Palestinian state to genuine progress on Kashmir.

Tom Hayden on January 28, 2008:
Endorsing Obama (by Tom Hayden, writing in The Nation)
Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agenda. Such movements in the past led the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt to achievements they never contemplated. (As Gandhi once said of India’s liberation movement, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”) We are in a precious moment where caution must yield to courage. It is better to fail at the quest for greatness than to accept our planet’s future as only a reliving of the past. So I endorse the movement that Barack Obama has inspired and will support his candidacy in the inevitable storms ahead.
And the betrayals, Tom?  How about those?

There’s the betrayal on war:
Major Anti-War Groups Staying Quiet About (Or Supporting) Obama’s Afghan Escalation (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Don’t look now, but President Obama’s announcement today of an escalation in the American presence in Afghanistan is being met with mostly silence — and even some support — from the most influential liberal groups who opposed the Iraq War… The relative silence on the left about Obama’s Afghan strategy is understandable. The politics of Afghanistan are murky because of September 11th. The argument against staying isn’t as clear cut as with Iraq. Liberal groups don’t want to distract from passing Obama’s enormous domestic agenda. Obama’s Afghan moves are part of a larger regional strategy that rests heavily on diplomacy — a major break from the past. And officials with some of these groups don’t want to lose inside influence with the White House. Times do change.

Not Exactly The Straight Dope (by Paul Rosenberg at Open Left, thanks to Lambert at Corrente)
Obama’s blowing off of [the question of pot legalization] question was fundamentally no more egregious than his blowing off of those who challenged his FISA flip-flop… The simple fact is that laws must be rooted in some sort of morality–not moralism.  If too many people just think that a law’s absurd, unfair, or out of touch, it will be very difficult to enforce, and it will undermine respect for law in general–it will erode the foundations on which it is supposed to stand.  Drug laws–at least as they presently exist–are a danger to our Constitutional order, not just because enforcing them leads to all sorts of Constitutional violations on a daily, even hourly basis, but also because it erodes popular respect for the law in general, and cynicism about the Constitution.

Thus, the question about legalizing pot really was a very serious question on any number of levels.  And President Obama bumbled it very badly, in just the way that our clueless overlords heartily approve of.
Lambert asks, “If it’s bad to govern out of anger, why is it good to govern out of snickering?”

There’s the betrayal on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:
Gates: No change soon on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell‘ (AP)
Don’t expect any change soon to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays in the military. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says both he and President Barack Obama have “a lot on our plates right now.” As Gates puts it, “let’s push that one down the road a little bit.” The White House has said Obama has begun consulting with Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on how to lift the ban. Gates says that dialogue has not really progressed very far at this point in the administration.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Patronize Me (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
Once again, the gay-phobic Carebear throws another campaign promise under the bus, and the perennially (and with California’s Proposition 8, legally-defined) second-class gay and lesbian citizens of the US are short changed by another Democratic administration. But as Warren Beatty says in Bullworth, “what are you going to do? Vote for the Republicans?”

Gay Rights Activists Chagrined at Obama Administration Foot-Dragging on Overturning Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
Gay and lesbian rights advocates expressed chagrin Sunday at the lack of urgency President Obama seems to be giving his campaign promise to overturn the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces… [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates said the “dialogue” about overturning the ban “has really not progressed very far at this point in the administration.  I think the president and I feel like we’ve got a lot on our plates right now, and let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”… Eighty-one percent of the public, according to a December CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, believes openly gay and lesbian Americans should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

There’s the betrayal on card check:
DiFi flips on card check, fucks the unions over (by lambert at Corrente)
That’s because, says DiFi, ”feelings are very strong on both sides of the issue.” No doubt.
And we must not, no matter what, tackle any issues where the feelings are very strong on both sides.  We must not stand up for what we believe.  We absolutely must cower in the corner like the cowards that we are.

There’s the betrayal on the middle class tax cut:
Middle class tax cut will “not likely survive” (by J –SOM at Liberal Rapture)
ABC News: Promised middle class tax cut now up for debate. Obama’s budget chief today indicated that it will “not likely survive”. Now, I must wonder, how will Huffington, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the rest of the Obamamedia excuse this whopper? This would be a broken promise to 95% percent of the population who are not likely to accept the 2 year sunset clause on the cut in the stimulus bill as a “promise kept.” Pretty shady, Barry.

And there’s the betrayal on health care:
Obama’s version of universal health care probably won’t look like Canada’s (Canadian Press, thanks to Lambert at Corrente)
U.S. President Barack Obama is intent on providing affordable health care to every American, he said Thursday, but emulating Canada’s system isn’t necessarily the route he wants to take… “A lot of people think that in order to get universal health care, it means that you have to have what’s called a single-payer system of some sort,” he said. “And so Canada is the classic example. Basically, everybody pays a lot of taxes into the health-care system, but if you’re a Canadian, you’re automatically covered … you go in and you just say ‘I’m sick’ and somebody treats you and that’s it,” he said. Implementing such a system in the U.S., however, would likely present an overwhelming challenge to politicians, employers and working Americans alike, he said.
It’s not that hard.  This is the time for it.  Americans are not only ready for single payer, they want it.  Why is Obama against it?  Is it another one of his right-wing hang-ups?

What the Teleprompter Teaches (by Michael Gerson, not my favorite columnist)
For politicians, the teleprompter has always been something of an embarrassing vice… But it is a mistake to argue that the uncrafted is somehow more authentic. Those writers and commentators who prefer the unscripted, who use “rhetoric” as an epithet, who see the teleprompter as a linguistic push-up bra, do not understand the nature of presidential leadership or the importance of writing to the process of thought. Governing is a craft, not merely a talent. It involves the careful sorting of ideas and priorities. And the discipline of writing — expressing ideas clearly and putting them in proper order — is essential to governing… Leaders who prefer to speak from the top of their heads are not more authentic, they are often more shallow — not more “real,” but more undisciplined.
Except that Hillary doesn’t need a teleprompter to speak clearly, concisely, and eloquently. Nor does Bill. Nor does Chelsea, for that matter. Because they care. Because they’re actually engaged in the process and the issues. Obama, on the other hand, is playing at being president. Just like his predecessor.

Poll: More Now Think Obama Is “Partisan Dem” — And His Approval Rating Is Up! (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Not that you needed it, but here’s yet another possible sign that the public doesn’t tend to want our politicians to engage in “bipartisanship” for its own sake. A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that 50% now think President Obama is “governing as a partisan Democrat,” up seven points from last month and up 11 points from two months ago. So has that shift hurt his approval rating? Nope. If anything, it’s the opposite. Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll finds that Obama’s approval rating is up, at 58%. It finds that the number who “strongly approve” of his performance is also up, to 37%.
If it were only true.  If only he WERE turning into a Democrat.

Holder Reaffirms Commitment To Cherished Values (American Constitution Society, where Holder was on the Board of Directors)
In a symbolic swearing-in ceremony today, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder again signaled his intention to lead the department in a new direction. Holder, the 82nd attorney general and a former member of the ACS Board of Directors, said during the ceremony at the Justice Department headquarters that he would strive to be guided by the nation’s cherished principles, such as equality before the law. The Washington Post also reported that Holder tried to “inspire career prosecutors demoralized by political hiring scandals during the Bush years.”

Politicization Charges at DOJ over Brazile Appearance (Washington Wire, Wall Street Journal)
New leadership at the Justice Department is aiming to erase memories of the highly-charged political controversies from the previous administration. But already some of the same “politicization” charges are being flung at the Justice Department, under Attorney General Eric Holder, as the department prepares to host veteran Democratic Party strategist Donna Brazile for a “Women’s History Month” event. Brazile has built a long career as an election campaign strategist for candidates from Walter Mondale to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. A flyer sent to Justice Department employees advising of the March 31 Brazile appearance, says “Supervisors are encouraged to grant official time to employees to attend this event.”

Reid To Critics Of ‘Moderate’ Democrats: You’re ‘Very Unwise And Not Helpful’ (Think Progress)
In recent weeks, a number of progressive groups and commentators have criticized Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) for his attempts to organize his fellow Conservative Democrats into a new Blue Dog-style caucus that will work to “restrain the influence of party liberals in the White House and on Capitol Hill.” Now, however, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is telling the Bayh critics to back off. This morning at a breakfast briefing with reporters, Reid called the critiques “very unwise and not helpful“… Reid’s comments appear to grow out of a fear that progressive criticisms of Bayh and his fellow Conservative Democrats might upset them so much that they would vote against Obama’s agenda out of anger. But some of Bayh’s allies are already indicating that they may be opposed.

Rep. Issa pushing to limit first lady’s power to ‘protect’ her ‘historic role.’ (Think Progress)
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his conservative allies are pushing for legislation that would limit the first lady’s ability to do substantive policy work. Issa had originally proposed the bill last year, in fear of Bill Clinton moving back in to the White House. But he insists the bill is only about ensuring “transparency” for the work of first ladies, adding, “We are trying actually to protect the historic role of the first lady.” Or, as Gawker summed up Issa’s proposal in its headline, “Congressman Wants Michelle Obama To Shut Up And Look Pretty.”
Yeah, he’s just trying to help.

A Prop 8 Crusader Leaves the GOP (by Kathleen Parker, a conservative columnist, interviewing Howard Ahmanson, a crazed, right-wing anti-gay, uh, person, at the Daily Beast)
[Ahmanson, upon switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party:] I’ve been part of the religious right and I don’t go to great lengths to hide that… I expect to do the same things but in a slightly more bipartisan format. In case someone asked, “intelligent design” is neither Republican nor Democrat. And what I expect the Democratic Party to offer me is knowledge of people—admittedly a fringe—who know that. And of course, though Proposition 8 is a sideline, it won with the support of lots and lots of Democrats…

Sarah Palin?… I like her, though I’ll have to confess that I like Bobby Jindal better. I’m now a blue-dog Democrat for Bobby Jindal for 2012…

It’s a bit early for Obama, and he may do well or he may not do well. It’s a bit too early. There were some things I was disappointed about. I was disappointed in his position on abortion and stem cells, but I knew he was going to do that, so I wasn’t surprised. Something I’m pleased with is, if he dares to uphold the voucher program in D.C. and go on from there, that would be a very good thing and I will actually have an opportunity to say something nice about our president…

I think Christians should be environmentalists. According to theology, God is the landlord and we are the responsible tenants. But to believe in environmental stewardship doesn’t mean you have to believe in some of the schemes of elitists to gain control in the name of environmentalism.
Ain’t it great that Obama attracts people like this?

And speaking of blue dogs,
Bayh Household Finance Update (State of the Division, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Mrs. Bayh currently sits on the board of five health care corporations. Add two prior health care directorships and Susan sat on seven health related corporate boards… Susan Bayh’s health care board pay for 2007 equalled $770,000. All board pay roughly totalled $840,000. That’s over four times Evan’s Senatorial pays… With over $1.1 million in potential family holdings, what kind of health care reform can the public expect from Senator Evan Bayh? One that maintains private sector profits and executive pay for performance? Highly likely.

The REAL GOP plan revealed! (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)

McConnell: Bush was a ‘millstone’ around Republicans’ necks. (Think Progress)
[Friday], Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters he is convinced that the public will again embrace conservatives now that President Bush is gone: “President Bush had become extremely unpopular, and politically he was sort of a millstone around our necks in both ‘06 and ‘08. We now have the opportunity to be on offense, offer our own ideas and we will win some.” McConnell hasn’t always rejected Bush. As Matt Yglesias has noted, “It’s McConnell, after all, who was architect of the unorthodox notion that Senate Republicans should respond to losing their majority in 2006 by launching a lot of filibusters in defense of the unpopular incumbent president’s agenda.” So who is the new leader of the party? In the same interview, McConnell said, “Newt Gingrich, for example, has an idea a minute. Many of those are quite good. Many of those become amendments.”

Cornyn: GOP Prepared To Fight ‘World War III’ To Keep Franken Out Of The Senate For ‘Years’ (Think Progress)
Last week, the ongoing legal battle between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman officially became the “the longest recount in Minnesota history.” Though Franken leads Coleman in the current vote tally, according to the Minnesota Supreme Court, he can’t be certified until after election challenges have been decided in the state courts. If Coleman loses in the state courts, he and his Republican backers are indicating that they may seek to bring it to the federal level, which could keep the Senate seat vacant for much longer. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn told Politico recently that the party is willing to keep the seat empty for “years“.
Republicans are scorched-earth fighters.  They’ve been scorched-earth fighters for years.  Why haven’t Democrats learned to fight back in meaningful ways?

McCain Says Public Financing is Dead (Political Wire)
Sen. John McCain, “an architect of sweeping campaign-finance reform who got walloped by a presidential candidate armed with more than $750 million, predicts that no one will ever again accept federal matching funds to run for the nation’s highest office,” the Washington Times reports. Said McCain: “No Republican in his or her right mind is going to agree to public financing. I mean, that’s dead. That is over. The last candidate for president of the United States from a major party that will take public financing was me.”

Conservative Think Tank Adjusts to Tough Times (Washington Independent, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
The details of AEI’s financial picture are private, and spokespeople for the think tank do not discuss fundraising or financial specifics. Much of its donor information is privileged, although some foundations reveal the size and purpose of the grants they have given AEI. But it is clear that the foundation grants and large corporate donations that go to AEI have changed, in ways that have affected the bottom line, overall spending, and individual scholars. Companies that have given generously to AEI in the past, such as General Motors, are facing harder times.

“We’ve contacted AEI,” said Greg Martin, a spokesman for the General Motors Foundation, “and we’ve told them that this is a very tough time for General Motors and we’re either cutting or closely reviewing the contributions we’re giving to think tanks.”

Joe The Plumber To Campaign With Specter’s Conservative Challenger (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Okay, now the pressure on Senator Arlen Specter from his right is really gonna get intense. It turns out that his main conservative primary challenger, Club for Growth president Pat Toomey, is going to get the ultimate in blessings from the right: He’s campaigning alongside Joe the Plumber!… This doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr. Plumber is endorsing Toomey. But you can bet that the last thing Specter wants to see is Toomey and Mr. Plumber, side by side, railing in unison against the Employee Free Choice Act.
They’re keeping the pressure up.  It’s what you do when you’re serious about your issues.

Alaska Democrats aim to block Palin’s state Senate pick (McClatchy)
Gov. Sarah Palin has appointed legislative aide Tim Grussendorf to the state Senate seat that opened when Juneau Democrat Kim Elton resigned. It’s a controversial pick that Grussendorf’s own party says it will try to block.

Palin won’t budge on parental-consent abortion bill (McClatchy)
State legislators are talking about compromising on a major abortion battle over parental consent, but Gov. Sarah Palin isn’t interested in the deal… The compromise under discussion would be legislation that requires parental notification but not consent. That means parents would have to be told about their teenager’s plan to have an abortion but wouldn’t have to give their permission for it to happen.

Obama Brings Flush Times for Black News Media
For the nation’s black magazines, newspapers, and television and radio stations, the arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in an era of unprecedented access to the White House. “We have, at last, an equal seat at the table,” said Bryan Monroe, the VP and editorial director of Ebony and Jet.

COMFORT FOOD: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
MSNBC’s cable shows largely exist to serve certain types of canned comfort food, as they did all through the 1990s. There is one obvious differene, of course. In that decade, cynical, overpaid, corporate-picked hosts fed you endless manufactured crap about both Clintons, then Gore. Now, they feed you crap about Palin–and about Blagojevich’s hair. The targets have changed, but the process has not. You’re still inside a house of games, consuming that comfortable drivel. For the record, our increasingly clownish liberal news orgs have become impressively skilled at turning jokes into scandals.
And isn’t that exactly what we’ve objected to all these years in how right-wing media behaves?  How pitiful is it that we are now them?

Brzezinski asks: “Is America the Bernie Madoff of all economies?” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

A Very Serious Non-Partisan Voice Speaks (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Shorter David Broder: Although I didn’t criticize President Bush for running up a huge deficit to give tax cuts to the wealthy, it really, really worries me if Democrats do it.

Let’s Not Argue About Who Killed Who (by Dean Baker)
Sorry, but I couldn’t resist. When a New York Times columnist tells us that we shouldn’t bother to try to assign blame to the millionaires and billionaires who wrecked the world economy and created a situation in which tens of millions of people will go unemployed and hungry, what else can you say?

Biden’s Daughter Targeted (Political Wire)
A “friend” of Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware, the New York Post reports. Craig Crawford doesn’t buy it: “The newspaper’s editors act as though they took the high ground by stating ‘the Post refused to pay for the video.’ But then they go on to speculate in print about what’s on it — despite being unable to confirm that Ashley is on the tape.”
There is no excuse for this kind of behavior by the media.  None.

WSJ’s Fund claims Obama administration wants “to micromanage the car industry towards the social engineering goals that they want” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Kurtz cites Media Matters on Kudlow; says he “wouldn’t be very credible on CNBC if he were openly shilling for one party” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Kudlow: “Do you really want one dictatorial Soviet-style Politboro central planning regulator?” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Fox News’ Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star (New York Times)
“You are not alone,” Glenn Beck likes to say. For the disaffected and aggrieved Americans of the Obama era, he could not have picked a better rallying cry. Beck, an early-evening host on the Fox News Channel, is suddenly one of the most powerful voices for the nation’s conservative populist anger.

The NYT plays dumb about Glenn Beck (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
No surprise, since this is the Beltway press’ standard operating procedure when covering leaders of the conservative media:  categorically refuses to spell out to readers what they actually say that makes them so controversial. In its Beck profile on Monday, the Times dutifully follows those guidelines while adding in the twist of not quoting a single liberal who’s critical of Fox News’ coo-coo, pseudo-End Times host.

Beck claims Americorps bill “basically indoctrinates your child into community service through the federal government” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Fox News Sees Its Site as a Place for Public Venting (Washington Post)
With Fox Nation, an opinionated HuffPo-like Web site that launches this morning, Fox News is hoping to leverage its brand online. “We felt that giving people a real destination to go and express themselves would give them a feeling of belonging,” says SVP Joel Cheatwood.

Hannity praises House GOP budget blueprint, claims media “excoriates” it because “they want the 2,000 pages” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Hannity falsely claims “we actually have from the Pentagon, 61 people that we released from Gitmo, 61 have gone back to the battlefield” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

On Hannity, McCaughey falsely claims stimulus provision would “deliver protocols that will tell your doctor to limit care to what the government’s advisers deem cost-effective” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Cavuto says Geithner “is building himself the kingdom, grabbing for more power over companies;” caption reads “Geithner’s Power Grab: A Grab for Your Wallet?” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

O’Reilly identifies ‘the far left blogs’ as his #1 enemy. (Think Progress)
In their interview with Bill O’Reilly this morning, the ladies of The View failed to question him about his comments on rape or his record of stalking and harassing his perceived enemies. Instead, they let O’Reilly make a series of attacks that went unchallenged [for example]: “…And if they do stuff that’s dishonest, I’m going after them. And we do.” Of course, that would have been a perfect opening to ask O’Reilly about whether his “harassment machine” is the right way to go after his opponents. But O’Reilly escaped unscathed.
Click through to watch the video.

Chrysler responds to our campaign: ‘We currently do not have the O’Reilly Factor in our media rotation.’ (Think Progress)
Chrysler LLC spokeswoman Carrie McElwee has responded to our Stop Supporting The O’Reilly Harassment Machine campaign with this statement: “We appreciate the diverse audience that television programming allows us to reach. Chrysler buys network cable as a package but we currently do not have the O’Reilly Factor in our media rotation at this time.” Please join our campaign.

One more reason to use UPS (by lambert at Corrente)
Not only have they pulled their advertising from Stalker O’Reilly’s show, they’re union, and, unlike FedEx, they’re not using extortion tactics against the government to fight card check.

As one of “Fred’s points to ponder,” Barnes claims the “power grab by Obama is even more than FDR tried in the New Deal” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
If only.

Bruce claims recovery act “crap sandwich” created a “Nazi, fascist health czar” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Kristol on whether he owes the American public an apology for hyping Iraq WMD claims: ‘No.’ (Think Progress)
On Friday, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. A caller criticized his publication for hyping President Bush’s pre-invasion lies about WMD in Iraq, and asked him to apologize to the American public. Kristol refused, saying that the war has been a smashing success… Kristol then tried to switch the topic, saying, “And also in Afghanistan, incidentally, it’s President Obama who’s announcing the increase in troops today. It’s not something he was forced into by the Weekly Standard or anyone else.” (As ThinkProgress noted [earlier], Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan-Pakistan is not the same as Bush’s surge in Iraq.)
Click through to watch the video.

Limbaugh on Obama: “It’s like I said yesterday: cheat on me but don’t tell me … He’s a cult leader. Battered liberal syndrome. Cheat on me, just don’t tell me” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh again repeats falsehood that Obama “voted for infanticide” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh on Pelosi: “The third person in line for the presidency in this country is a complete airhead” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Detainee’s Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots (Washington Post)
[N]ot a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said… “We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,” one former intelligence official said.

Despite the poor results, Bush White House officials and CIA leaders continued to insist that the harsh measures applied against Abu Zubaida and others produced useful intelligence that disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives… Since 2006, Senate intelligence committee members have pressed the CIA, in classified briefings, to provide examples of specific leads that were obtained from Abu Zubaida through the use of waterboarding and other methods, according to officials familiar with the requests. The agency provided none, the officials said.

Spanish court agrees to consider criminal case against former Bush administration officials. (Think Progress)
A Spanish court “has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials…over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay.” The officials include former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. The AP has more details on the case.
Somebody has to do it.  Lambert says this is the same judge who indicted Chilean dictator and murderer, Augusto Pinochet.

Effort to Bypass Electoral College Gains Ground (Political Wire)
The National Popular Vote initiative — which aims to make the Electoral College irrelevant without going through the arduous process of amending the Constitution — “is making slow but steady progress across the country,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “States are asked to enact laws pledging their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, no matter who wins the state. The pledge takes effect only when states holding at least 270 electoral votes — a decisive margin in the Electoral College — agree to participate. That would ensure that the winner of the popular vote would take the election… So far, four states representing 50 electoral votes have adopted the pledge: Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland and Hawaii.”

Health insurance is not the same as health care (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Health Reform Lessons from Massachusetts, Part I “Dr. Rachel Nardin, who heads the Massachusetts chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, noted that having health insurance was not the same as getting health care. Thirteen percent of people in the state who had insurance still could not pay for some health services, and 13 percent could not pay for their medicines, she said. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, explained how the law encouraged the overuse of costly high-tech care while damaging the finances of safety-net hospitals.” [Emphasis added.]

Now The Real Fun Begins (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. But hey, isn’t it great that lobbyists have managed to prevent Congress from letting bankruptcy judges lower mortgage payments? Go, Harry! Win-win!… “City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate. The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches.” [Emphasis added]

An Ugly Consequence of the Recession – Domestic Violence up 37% in FL (by campskunk at Alegre’s Corner)
I don’t have a lot of fancy analysis for this one; it’s just another bleak signpost on our way into this economic mess.  In Florida, where 10% of the population is already on food stamps and unemployment is higher than 10%, demand for domestic violence shelters has increased by 37%. “The darkest side of the grinding recession is showing up in a spike in domestic violence, including a 37-percent increase in the demand for emergency shelter services across the state. ‘It’s the worst I’ve seen in years,’ said Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon.”

Commentary: Schools are not businesses (by Wayne Au, Bill Bigelow and David Levine, editors of Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org), a quarterly magazine based in Milwaukee)
We should stop treating our schools as businesses… We have to remember, education is a humane and human process with social values beyond the bottom line. Business leaders have no expertise in this quest, and business models do not apply. For that matter, now that casino capitalism has imploded, isn’t it time to stop looking to the corporate elite for advice on how to run the schools? These “experts” – the bankers and corporate CEOs – couldn’t even manage the one thing they are supposed to be good at: running their own businesses.

Educators should shed their subordinate status and sense of inferiority. Schools work best when teachers – in dialogue with parents and other citizens – design the educational experience, not corporate officials.
Gee, too bad business itself can’t be a humane and human process.

Needed: A New Commission To Probe Corporate Crime (by Danny Schechter)
Why Hasn’t Obama Targeted The Ongoing White Collar Crime Wave?

Freedom Tower name changed to One World Trade Center (New York Newsday)
The Port Authority, the agency that owns the building at Ground Zero, said Thursday that the signature skyscraper replacing the Twin Towers destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, will be more commonly known as One World Trade Center. The reason for the name swapping? One World Trade Center is more marketable, said Steve Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority. “We believe there’s been a good response in the marketplace toward it,” Sigmund said Thursday.
Why not just paint a bullseye around it?

Texans forge compromise on evolution
State education leaders forged a compromise Friday on the teaching of evolution in Texas, adopting a new science curriculum that no longer requires educators to teach the weaknesses of all scientific theories.

Texas universities voice opposition to bill that would allow guns on campuses (McClatchy)
Texas universities are firing back against a bill that would permit students to carry handguns on campus.

Virginia legislature passes bill restricting state funds for embryonic stem cell research. (Think Progress)
The Virginia politics blog Not Larry Sabato notes that Virginia’s GOP-led House of Delegates and Democratic-controlled Senate passed a bill earlier this month that prevents the state’s Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund from financing research involving embryonic stem cells.

Red State Update:Legalize Drugs, Save Mexico (video)
Jackie and Dunlap’s solution to the Mexican drug wars. Well, Dunlap’s, at least.
Don’t go making sense, now!

Media Matters for America headlines

• Fox News invokes Canadian health care bogeyman in talking about Richardson’s death

• Hannity falsely claimed NI director plans to “release … enemy combatants on American soil”

• USA Today uncritically reported GOP charge that stimulus advocates supported “provision that allowed the [AIG] bonuses to be paid”

• Fox Business’ Varney mischaracterizes Wagoner’s departure

• Question for Bill Shine: Is Fox News “the voice of opposition” or “not ideological”?

• Fox News’ Henneberg falsely claimed “[r]econciliation was last used in 2001″

• Gregory falsely equated Obama remark with McCain’s “fundamentals of our economy are strong” comment

• Limbaugh challenged: In LA Times op-ed, Klavan claimed he’s “never heard” Limbaugh “utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word”

• CNN’s Keilar, caption falsely claimed Geithner’s financial takeover request was “unprecedented”

• Media Matters: Pay no attention to the GOP “power grab” behind the curtain

• Hill piece, touted by Drudge, advanced Gregg’s false comparison between “debt levels” of U.S., EU members

• Ignoring ATF data, Fox’s Bream advanced “gun advocates” claim that “vast majority” of Mexican cartel weapons not from US

• Deficient budget coverage

• Wash. Post, LA Times reported Boehner criticism of Geithner plan, but not his support for similar GOP plan

• Media use announcement of new Afghanistan strategy to revive “Obama’s war” label

Some Media Stocks Take Beating On Auto Bailout News (Paid Content)
President Obama made it clear today that he does not plan to cut the auto industry a blank check—and that’s bad news for media companies. That sentiment is playing out in the market this morning, as some big media stocks are taking a hit. The media companies with the most exposure to national ad dollars (that’s where the auto companies spend a lot of their marketing budgets) are suffering largest percentage declines: CBS (which owns national TV and radio assets) was down 18 percent as of noon EST; Gannett (publisher of USA Today) was down 10 percent. A dour report by SNL Kagan on the prospects for the radio and TV industries is probably also contributing to today’s decline.

The car industry is the single-biggest source of subscribers for Sirius XM, which is certainly part of the reason the stock was down 10 percent this morning (though even in normal times Sirius tends to swing more widely than most media companies).

Radio shines in Fargo flooding.
As the Red River kept rising, the stations that serve the Fargo-Moorhead market rose to the task, delivering around-the-clock news and information. There are no reports of damaged tower sites even though several AM sites are close to the river, where sandbags and levees have held.

Google, music labels launch China download service
Google Inc. and major music companies launched a free Internet music download service for China on Monday in a bid to help turn a field dominated by pirates into a profitable, legitimate business.

Researchers: Cyber spies break into govt computers
A cyber spy network based mainly in China hacked into classified documents from government and private organizations in 103 countries, including the computers of theDalai Lama and Tibetan exiles, Canadian researchers said Saturday. The work of the Information Warfare Monitor initially focused on allegations of Chinese cyber espionage against the Tibetan community in exile, and eventually led to a much wider network of compromised machines, the Internet-based research group said.

House Communications, Technology & Internet Subcommittee chair outlines his agenda
Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher, the recently appointed chairman of the powerful House Communications, Technology & Internet Subcommittee, says that his top legislative priorities include reauthorizing the law that allows satellite to import TV station signals into a market, and coming up with a new law that would restrict how behavioral marketers can target potential online customers.

Shepard Fairey Goes To HuffPo to Plead His Case Against The AP (UnBeige, Media Bistro)
As his ongoing battle with the Associated Press continues, Shepard Fairey, as a man of the people, has decided to go to the most “of the people”-esque outlet, The Huffington Post, to file [a] lengthy essay, pleading his case. Along the way, he described his process, his problems with the AP’s complaints over his Obama poster, and describes his battle as a fight “to protect the rights of all artists.”

Hey, Nanoblog This! The New New-Media Lexicon Decoded (by Simon Dumenco, Advertising Age)
AdSense – n. An automated, senseless act of violence against the traditional advertising industry.
Ballmer – v. To endlessly pursue someone who is not interested (after Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer’s endless pursuit of Yahoo). Usage: That dude was totally ballmering me, so finally I ended up giving him a fake cellphone number.
Content – n. 1. A deposed ruler. 2. A king-turned-pauper.
Click through for much, much more.

European Newspapers Find Creative Ways to Thrive in the Internet Age
A few newspaper publishers are providing news on the Web for free, but are relying more on readers than advertisers, turning a profit by charging for associated services and online activities.

Aggregation Forces Journalistic Evolution
News Outlets Must Accept That Consumers Want More Content Faster — and Don’t Care Who Creates It

Slate botches Pew poll about newspapers (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
From Slate’s Jack Shafer…: “a majority of Americans don’t care whether their local newspaper lives or dies” … [T]hat’s just flat out wrong, and therefore kicks a significant leg out from the Slate argument. As we already noted in detail, what the Pew poll actually found was that a majority of Americans (58%) would care if their newspaper folded: 33% would miss it a “lot,” and 25% would miss it “some.”  That’s 58%.  And among those polled who called themselves regular newspaper readers, a whopping 80% said they would miss their daily if it folded… As for Slate’s larger point that newspapers aren’t important to democracy, Pew found that an overwhelming majority of American rejected that claim: 74% say losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community. (81% among regular newspaper readers.)

Late Editor Blames Three Key People for Newspapers’ Demise (by John Walter at Poynter Online)
There are three people in the world responsible for [newspapers'] demise, and — because I have always loved newspapers — I want to say I’m mad at them about it. And, therefore, I want to record for posterity who they are, and why we should be mad at them.
To me, the third person Walter names, and the mindset he represents, is infinitely more responsible than the first two.  And media businesses aren’t the only ones that have been ruined by the elite business school get rich quick and damn the consequences mentality.

Slices of a new journalism pie (by Jeff Jarvis)
The AP reports that Huffington Post is going to announce … the creation of a $1.75 million fund with various donors to pay for investigative reporting. First target: the economy. This, I’ve long held, is where foundation and public support will enter into the new ecosystem of journalism: not by taking over newspapers but by funding investigations and other slices of a new journalistic pie… Now to touch the third rail in the debate over the future of news: This is how paid content will work, how news will get money from its public — not by putting content behind walls and charging all readers (the few who’ll remain) to see it but instead by setting up systems to take advantage of the 1 percent rule online that decrees you need only a limited number of contributors (of money or effort) to support great things in a gift economy. See: Wikipedia and NPR. But the public’s contributions won’t go to lifting the sinking Titanics of the old-media failures.
So a bunch of rich white guys, probably owners of major corporations, will get to decide what’s investigated?

Tracking The Online-Only Seattle P-I: Traffic Down 20 Percent (Paid Content)
It makes some sense: Cut your editorial staff by 80 percent, and there’s at least a decent chance that Web traffic will tumble. And that’s just what has happened at the new online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Page views are down about 20 percent in the week since the newspaper killed its print edition and became an online-only publication, according to internal numbers… Clearly, the P-I’s online experiment is still in the early days, but the company itself has fanned heady expectations: A day after the new Seattlepi.com launched, Hearst Spokesman Paul Luthringer told the Associated Press that the company was encouraged by the website’s traffic on its first day, when it got 1.9 million page views. The dirty little secret: a good chunk of that traffic probably went to content created by staffers who had already left. 

As you may remember, in ceasing publication of the paper’s print edition, Seattle P-I owner Hearst Corp. laid off 160 of its employees, including most of its long-time beat reporters, and replaced them with 20 full-time “news gatherers,” who write on a myriad of topics. The site now depends heavily on local AP stories and to a lesser extent on third-party sites it links to for content. According to one report, Hearst expected that traffic would drop between 25 percent and 30 percent initially, before increasing within three months, though the company hasn’t offered such figures publicly.

Online Journalists Show ‘Uneasy Optimism’ For the Future 
Most of the 300 respondents to the survey by the Online News Association and the Project for Excellence in Journalism did not believe journalism was headed in the wrong direction, the report said. But more than half believe the Internet is changing the “fundamental values of journalism¿more often than not for the worse.”

It’s Not The New York Times (by Michael Wolff at Newser.com)
The New York Times, as we know it, has been disappearing for some time. It may — diminishing as though by half-lives — have degraded to the point where, in any practical sense, it has long since ceased to be the leading voice in either journalism or the establishment.

Bowden: Sulzberger seems clever enough, but he fails to impress
NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. “comes off as a lightweight, as someone slightly out of his depth, whose dogged sincerity elicits not admiration so much as pity,” writes Mark Bowden. “While no one blames him for what is clearly a crisis afflicting all newspapers, he has made a series of poor business moves that now follow him like the tail of a kite.” Friend Peter Osnos says: “Sure, Arthur has made his share of mistakes. But they get recycled all the time, and he rarely gets the credit he deserves for what he’s done right.”

Setbacks in Bay Area Add to Pain for The Chronicle
Geography, demographics and competition in the Bay Area are posing challenges beyond the headwinds facing all newspapers.

SF powerbrokers discuss restructuring Chronicle as a philanthropic venture
SF Mayor Gavin Newsom and others met last week to discuss the possibility of converting the Chronicle into a nonprofit or into an L3C — a low-profit limited liability company whose main role is helping society rather than making money. Publisher Frank Vega says: “At this time, I feel talk of creating a nonprofit umbrella is premature. We’re in negotiations with our unions to assist us in developing a viable future.”

Star Tribune Begins Holding Back Free Online News Stories Next Week (Paid Content)
[T]he Twin Cities’ StarTribune.com will begin what it’s tentatively calling an “experiment” in offering certain stories to print readers first. In an editorial, Star Tribune Editor Nancy Barnes admits that the move may seem counter-intuitive. But she alludes to the challenges of extracting necessary report mostly from online advertising, and says that the paper might as well at least reward paying readers. The paper will continue to make breaking news immediately available for free. But for those interested in reading dispatches from Star Tribune’s investigative projects, “deeply reported” non-breaking news stories and features, they’ll have to buy the paper.

AP Lists Dailies That Have Cut Editions in Past Year 
And it’s a long list, in 31 states, as the Christian Science Monitor and the two Detroit papers join the trend on Monday.

Detroit Papers: First Monday Without a Home-Delivered Edition 
Missing from the doorsteps and driveways of many Michigan homes Monday morning: newspapers. In a bold but risky move aimed at ensuring their survival in the digital age, The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are reducing home delivery to the three days a week most popular with advertisers.

IHT.com Folds In To NYTimes.com, Paper Redesigned For Closer Integration (Paid Content)
The New York Times Company is tightening the leash on its International Herald Newspaper by folding its well-respected IHT.com in to a NYTimes.com global section and redesigning the paper to look more like its stablemate.

Boston Herald Loses 24 Staffers
The Boston Herald has announced 24 layoffs — 13 voluntary and 11 involuntary — for a 6 percent work force reduction that primarily hit the business side of the paper. The Herald’s newsroom was largely unscathed, losing one photographer to a voluntary buyout.

Philly newspaper execs got bonuses just before bankruptcy filing
Steve Volk reports Philadelphia Media Holdings awarded a total of $650,000 in bonuses to CEO Brian Tierney, vice president of finance Richard Thayer and Daily News publisher Mark Frisby last December — two months before the company declared bankruptcy. It was reported earlier that Tierney received a raise in December that boosted his pay roughly 40%.

Metro USA papers will no longer use AP content
“Encouraging existing staff to write more and employing new writers gives us a higher degree of flexibility and results in a product which is more relevant to the young, professional audience we, and our advertisers, seek,” says Tony Metcalf, editor-in-chief of Metro USA, which has papers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

With The Weeklies/Biweeklies, There Is Some Advertising Hope In People
Nothing new in the overall poor advertising first quarter, which for most, concludes today but People has emerged from the cold a little bit with a +9.57% ad-page differential in the March 23 issue, followed by today’s +26.60%.

Prevention Cuts Rate Base 15 Percent
Rodale said it would lower the rate base of Prevention from 3.3 million to 2.8 million — a decrease of 15 percent. Last year, Prevention saw its total paid and verified circ drop slightly, down 1.3 percent, from 2007, according to FAS-FAX figures.

Do-It-Yourself Magazines, Cheaply Slick
Traditional printing houses charge thousands of dollars for a few hundred copies, but a new service hopes to cost less than making photocopies.
Why not download to an ebook?

The Kindle is Great (by Taegan Goddard at Political Wire)
For months, I’ve read the morning newspapers on the Kindle. I find it’s more convenient, it’s easier to read and it saves trees.  And I’m not alone: On a commuter train into New York City last week I counted 17 people using the Kindle. But the real sign I’m hooked is when I got a review copy of a really great book a few days ago in the mail and was disappointed I couldn’t put it on my Kindle.

NPR says it’s still subscribing to some newspapers
NPR says it still gets seven subscriptions to the New York Times, two to the Washington Post and seven Wall Street Journal subs, plus five online accounts. “It’s not a blanket no newspapers are coming into the building,” says NPR News deputy managing editor David Sweeney. “It’s more being prudent about how many we are bringing in.”

Ag radio growing revenues.
There have been double-digit increases in agricultural ad spending and some operators say they can hardly tell there’s a recession. More dollars are being made online too. The National Association of Farm Broadcasters says there are 1,815 stations in 43 states airing some form of ag programming.

Katz reaches deeper into agencies.
Katz Marketing Solutions president Bob McCurdy calls his team “marketing ninjas” whose mission is to bring new ad dollars to radio. They’re doing that by going upstream in the process and using new software weaponry.

Serious Threats to Sirius Radio
Since its inception, satellite radio bragged that unique content represented a key competitive weapon in the crowded digital media market. But as Web radio and mobile radio applications flourish, they are beginning to erode the value of Sirius’s pricey content deals.

One place the recession isn’t showing: at the box office
While everything else in our economy has been tanking, the movie industry is on a roll. Ticket sales for the first quarter of 2009 are up 14 percent… “This is exactly what happened after the collapse of 1929 and 1930,” [Paul Degaraberian of Media by Numbers] said. “Escapist movies were really paying off, and they were running theaters around the clock. Seventy million people a week were going to the movies.”

Ratigan: “People think I’m some kind of Che Guevara!”
Dylan Ratigan, who abruptly quit CNBC last week, says he still wants to communicate his concern for America’s financial mess. “I’m leaving CNBC in order to pursue this story with the broadest possible footprint,” he tells Jon Friedman. He insists he doesn’t know for which network he’ll be pursuing the story.
Maybe he should go to work for Arianna.  Or Mark Cuban.

O’Reilly: There have been convictions for threats against Fox News
From Paul Bond’s interview with Bill O’Reilly:
THR [The Hollywood Reporter]: Do you need bodyguards?
O’Reilly: On occasion, if I have to go into a large crowd and be stationary. …We have had death threats here, and Fox security people are excellent. We know that the far-left loons bait on the Internet, and they would do damage if they could.
THR: Any of those death threats result in arrests?
O’Reilly: We’ve had a few people convicted of crimes. I’m not going to get into descriptions.

MTV to Put a Bit More Music Back, in the A.M.
In an experiment that harks back to its origins, MTV will use 3 to 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday to show music videos, news, interviews and performances.

Video Game Makers Challenged by the Next Wave of Media
Games for the Web and smartphones are far cheaper to produce than the titles for the major consoles, whose makers must hope for blockbusters.

Popular Science, Science Channel Team for ‘Future’ Series
Print-TV Partnership to Sell Ads, Produce Shows

Analyst: Online Health Category Still Healthy (Paid Content)
Not every online sector is getting crushed in the economy. Health sites continues to thrive, even in the midst of the larger drop in online ad sales. In a report this morning on WebMD, Citi Analyst Mark Mahaney notes that “we believe the online health category should be poised for double-digit revenue growth in ‘09.” Why? Mahaney notes that there is a “flight to quality sites among Pharma advertisers” and says that “premium online health companies” like WebMD are increasingly selling long-term sponsorship ads instead of display ads. When WebMD reported its fourth-quarter earnings last month, the company said that it expected its revenue to grow 15 percent this year. Mahaney notes that that estimate, which he says is reasonable, “stands in sharp contrast” to the display-advertising outlook at other companies, including Yahoo.

AOL Wants To Replace Your Newspaper’s Sports Section: FanHouse Adds Half-Dozen Journalists (Paid Content)
Despite AOL’s recent layoffs, the Time Warner unit is beginning to staff up on its programming side. FanHouse, the all-encompassing sports blog that operates under AOL’s MediaGlow programming unit, has just hired five former newspaper journalists and one senior editor as it tries to take advantage in the coverage holes that many cities are experiencing as news staffs have slimmed down… In addition to the new hires, who include erstwhile Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Greg Couch, former Newark Star-Ledger baseball reporter Dan Graziano and Jeff Fletcher, who previously worked for the NYTCo’s Santa Rosa Press Democrat and Tribune Company’s LAT, FanHouse could hire more as it focuses on ramping up its baseball coverage, Moe said.

FanHouse isn’t the only MediaGlow unit that’s doing some hiring. StyleList.com, which is part of the AOL Living network, is also expected to announce three new staffers this morning, with two new faces coming from the AP and Harper’s Bazaar.

How Sites Like ESPN 360 Can Alleviate ‘Cord Cutting’ (by Andrew Hampp, Advertising Age)
Time Warner’s TV Everywhere initiative and others like it all seek to answer the same question: Will consumers pay for cable content online? If you ask George Bodenheimer, the answer is already yes. ESPN’s president launched ESPN360.com in the halcyon, pre-Hulu days of 2005 as a broadband product where sports fans could catch live streams or recaps of more than 3,000 games both mainstream (the NCAA Tournament) and obscure (the Bassmaster Elite). The catch: Unlike with Hulu and other ad-supported video sites, users can watch only if they’re verified, paying subscribers to one of ESPN 360’s internet-service-provider partners.

Some Online Shows Could Go Subscription-Only
Time Warner Cable is working with customers here to test a subscriber model for online TV viewing. Residents who pay for HBO can watch Big Love, Entourage and other programs on their computers, using special software and a personal log-in. People who are not HBO subscribers are barred.

Disney Finalizing Deal For Clips On YouTube; Full-Episode Talks Ongoing; Could Hulu Lose Out? (Paid Content)
The Walt Disney Company and Google are close to one programming deal for video portal YouTube, and are in discussions about another—also involving YouTube—that would preclude a deal with Hulu, paidContent has learned. Disney and YouTube are in the final stages of negotiations to put clips from ESPN, ABC and other Disney assets on YouTube, according to sources familiar with the situation. The two companies would share revenue, with Disney controlling the ad inventory; YouTube and Google could get some inventory to sell. As important, YouTube would refer back to ESPN.com, ABC.com and the other Disney sites. Disney declined comment; a YouTube spokesman said the company does not comment on rumor or speculation.

In addition, the two are discussing a full-episode deal—a multi-year pay-for-play deal that would put ABC and some other Disney programming on YouTube instead of NBC Universal-News Corp joint venture Hulu.

Coming Soon: The Hulufication of YouTube? (Mashable)
YouTube has been moving to bring in legitimate, licensed content from TV networks and movie studios for some time, inking deals with the likes of CBS and MGM, among others. Now, that professionally produced content is going to become the focal point of the site, as Google plans to launch a major redesign within the next month. According to ClickZ, YouTube’s main navigation will soon be switched to “Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos. The first three tabs will display premium shows, clips, and movies from Google’s network and studio partners, all of which will be monetized with in-stream advertising.”

Torrent Sharing Comes to Facebook: Will the RIAA Step In? (Mashable)
Soon you may be seeing links to download copies of Star Wars or the newest Britney Spears album pop up your Facebook news feed. This is because The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s most popular websites for file sharing and torrents, now allows you to share links to download these files right from your Facebook profile. It works simply: The Pirate Bay site now includes links under torrents to “Share on Facebook”. Once posted to your profile, your Facebook friends can click the link on Facebook to begin the download right away, provided they already have a torrenting client installed.

Careless Copyright Owners, Automated Takedowns: A Disaster for Online Creativity (y Corynne McSherry, Staff Attorney and Kahle Promise Fellow with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which champions civil liberties in the networked world)
As a result of a dispute between Warner Music and YouTube, Warner has set YouTube ‘s “Content I.D.” filter to remove all videos identified as containing any Warner music. (For more than two years, Warner permitted these uses and silently shared in the advertising revenue for the videos that included a “match” to its music.) As a result, thousands of videos are being disappeared from one of the Internet’s most popular and accessible arenas. In fact, according to statistics kept by YouTomb, there were twice as many videos removed from YouTube in January 2009 as in the entire previous year combined.

[Some] censored videos … are clearly non-infringing fair uses… This is copyright-as-censorship at its worst and it must be stopped. First, YouTube must fix the Content I.D. system so that it does not remove videos unless there is a match between the video and audio tracks of the work alleged to be infringed. Second, Warner should use the filter solely to identify infringing works, bringing a human into the loop before videos are taken down… Until these steps are taken, YouTube’s potential as a platform for free speech and new creators will remain unrealized.

Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post (Mashable)
One of the best things about the web and social media is how much great information is written and produced every single day. If you’re a regular reader of blogs, you probably come across great articles that you just want everyone to know about. But what’s the best way to share these posts? Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to spread the word. Blogs, social networks, instant messenger, and mobile phones are some of the many ways to let others know about the best content on the web. Here are our 20 favorite ways to share a great blog post:

FacePal: How Facebook Could Rival PayPal (Mashable)
Facebook continues to advocate and advance the platform, most recently by launching Facebook Connect for the iPhone. Facebook Connect has massive reach, and Facebook has yet to monetize it. But the confirmation that Facebook is looking at creating a virtual currency may open up the possibility of a radically new business model for Connect. By combining this virtual currency with Facebook Connect, Facebook could be the center of a new Internet marketplace for micro-payments, one no longer reliant on credit card transactions. It could accomplish the original vision of the PayPal founders: to be a universal currency.
Click through for more information.

Fring Launches a Better Twitter Mobile Experience for non-iPhone Users (Mashable)
Fring is a mobile platform that allows its users to chat and connect with friends via Skype, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ, and through Fring Add-ons, which connects your phone to Facebook and Gmail, among others. Fring offers everything from email updates to international Skype calling within iPhones, Windows Mobile devices, Nokia phones, and others.

Retweet iPhone App for Twitter: Free for 24h (Mashable)
“Retweeting” is a natural way of finding the best and most useful content on Twitter. By reposting a tweet and putting “RT” plus the originator’s username at the start (eg. “RT @mashable”) Twitter users can share tweets that interest them. On the web, there are several great tools for following retweets - RetweetRadar and Retweetist, for example. There are also blog buttons, like the one on this post, to make retweeting easier. For those who are on the go and still want to know what’s popular on Twitter, however, then Retweet … for the iPhone is a new app that’s worth a try.

BBH Offers A Deal To Employees Rather Than Lay Them Off (AgencySpy, Media Bistro)
Bartle Bogle Hegarty UK is asking its staff to take nine days unpaid leave a year, equivalent to a 3.5 per cent pay cut, to stave off the need for redundancies according to Brand Republic… Kudos to BBH for figuring out how make the money work without having to let anyone go. The agency’s US office has already seen a round of lay-offs. A spokesperson told us that “BBH New York’s business is strong, especially having won new assignments early this year. We are not considering any pay cuts at this time.” Now, there’s some good news. In the future let’s hope they follow mothership London’s lead and offer a similar deal.

A White Block Where an Ad Ought to Be
A Nascar driver raced with a large white rectangle on his car’s hood in an attempt to secure a sponsor.

Ad watchdog: Cablevision Internet not ‘fastest’
Cablevision Systems Corp. should stop saying its Internet service is “the fastest around,” the advertising industry’s self-regulatory body said Thursday, in response to complaints from competitor Verizon Communications Inc.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Despite Huge Push, Support For Obama’s Budget Slips A Bit (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Despite the huge push by Obama and Dems to sell his budget over the past several weeks, a new Gallup poll finds that public support for it hasn’t budged and may have even slipped a bit… At the end of February, 44% of national adults hold a generally positive view of the budget; now that number stands at 39%. Gallup says this shows that support for the budget has “held steady,” probably because the shift is within the margin of error. But Gallup, interestingly, also says that there has been a “noteworthy” drop in support for it among moderates and liberals.

Washington Dems To Blame For Slip In Support For Budget? (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
- One reader writes: “Since the first poll was taken, Congress has taken steps to make this budget more conservative. And support for the budget has dropped amongst liberals and moderates. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the problem here is D.C. Democrats are listening to Republicans’ concerns instead of voters’ concerns.”
- A second reader opines: “I am sure there are some Democrats/liberals/progressives whose view of the budget might be negative now because of the fact that Kent Conrad and the rest of the ConservaDems have watered it down and taken out the health care money and the cap and trade provisions.”…
Given that the new Gallup poll finds that support for the budget has slipped nine points among liberals and eight points among moderates, these takes sound pretty plausible.

House GOP offers budget blueprint but scant detail (AP)
House Republicans have released their response to President Barack Obama’s deficit-laden budget, but their glossy pamphlet offers little beyond campaign-style talking points.

GOP Releases Problem-Laden Alternative “Budget” Preview (Dissenting Justice)
Highlights from the Blueprint
Politics, Politics, Politics
The blueprint reads like a political document, rather than a budget (or budget preview)…
Questionable Statements
As with most political documents, the blueprint distorts the record…
Fiscally Troubling
The Republican blueprint suffers from the same problem as the Obama budget: It promises to do many things with insufficient funds.

Comparing the U.S. to Russia and Argentina (by Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory, Salon)
Desmond Lachman — the former chief strategist for emerging markets at Salomon Smith Barney and a long-time official with the IMF (no raving socialist he) – argues [Thursday] that the most apt comparison for the U.S. now is not Japan’s ”lost decade,” but rather, “that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we’re trying to fix it.”…

Despite the limitless gorging on public funds by the very oligarchs (government owners) who caused the financial crisis in the first place, the predominant sentiment from our establishment media now is that Obama needs to force ordinary Americans to “sacrifice more.”…

When I first heard Chuck Todd questioning Obama at Tuesday’s Press Conference about why Obama wasn’t demanding “sacrifice” from ordinary Americans — as though the massive loss of jobs, homes, retirement security and financial opportunities isn’t sufficient “sacrifice” – I mistakenly attributed Todd’s question to the standard vapid ignorance and insularity of our media stars.  I assumed that Todd was just mimicking a question he heard about 9/11 and decided to repeat it seven years later without realizing what a complete nonsequitur it is when applied to the financial crisis. 

But there was actually a more pernicious aspect to his question.  He was basically demanding of Obama:  shouldn’t you be telling those dirty masses that they can’t have health care and education improvements and that they’re also going to have to give up their Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits (while Citibank and BoA use taxpayer money to buy up distressed assets that they will then sell at a huge profit, also to the taxpayer under the Geithner plan)?…

The key dynamic underlying all of this — the linchpin that allows it all to happen and, historically, the primary hallmark of a deeply broken nation — is the total elimination of the rule of law for the ruling class, with a simultaneous intensification of the law as a weapon against the citizenry… There is fundamental corruption in our political system that has led to all of this, and that corruption, in so many ways, is now being exacerbated and fortified rather than uprooted.

The Quiet Coup (The Atlantic)
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, [Simon Johnson,] is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
So why do we put up with this? WHY AREN’T WE TAKING THE BRIBERY MONEY OUT OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS?

Instead, Congress is working to get MORE bribery money into the political process:
House Democrats Track Who’s Helping Party (Political Wire)
“It’s never too early in election cycle to start fundraising — or to shame your colleagues into contributing,” CQ Poltics reports. “The campaign arm of Democrats serving in the House is privately circulating a tally showing members of that caucus where they stack up in fundraising for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).” “With a quarterly filing period coming to an end next week, the internal list provides an early look at which members of the majority are looking to flex fundraising muscle within the party — and earn favor with the leadership while they’re at it.”

So this is good news:
Parties See Drop in Fundraising (Washington Post)
Between economic turmoil and a campaign that endlessly taxed donors, political giving slows.

Flashback, 1999 (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Sen Byron Dorgan on the floor opposing Gramm-Leach-Bliley: “I bet some day someone’s going to look back at this and say ‘How on earth could we have thought that it made sense?’”
Click through to watch the video. Wikipedia: “The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act … repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up competition among banks, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited a bank from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services.”

“It’s a great economy — FOR ME TO POOP ON!” (by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire)
It’s going to be difficult to write the history of this era, since partisans on both sides are already distorting what has occurred and is occurring. We must make clear to future generations that Dubya — and no-one else — created this problem by allowing the mortgage lenders and the derivatives market to go unregulated. But Obama has ruined his historic opportunity to solve the crisis. As Triumph the Insult Comic Dog might put it, replacing Bush with Obama is like pooping on poop.

Obama’s bank plan could rob the taxpayer (by Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University)
The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value. It is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the “price discovery” process is not genuine. It is no surprise that stock market capitalisation of the banks has risen about 50 per cent from the lows of two weeks ago. Taxpayers are the losers, even as they stand on the sidelines cheering the rise of the stock market. It is their money fuelling the rally, yet the banks are the beneficiaries.

Conflucians Say: Do you think we *like* being right? (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)
[C]ommenter Diego Mamani at Naked Capitalism gives us this example of what is likely to happen under Geithner’s Plan:
Summary:
Peter puts in $6, makes $2 profit
Paul puts in $48, makes $2 profit
U.S. puts in $84, makes a $36 LOSS
Bank had paper that was really worth $58 but got $90 for it, makes a $32 profit

The Heretik

The Market Mystique (by Paul Krugman)
[T]he administration seems to believe that once investors calm down, securitization — and the business of finance — can resume where it left off a year or two ago. To be fair, officials are calling for more regulation. Indeed, on Thursday Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, laid out plans for enhanced regulation that would have been considered radical not long ago. But the underlying vision remains that of a financial system more or less the same as it was two years ago, albeit somewhat tamed by new rules. As you can guess, I don’t share that vision. I don’t think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don’t believe it should try.

The Problem of Protectionism: Post Ignores Bank Subsidies (by Dean Baker)
Remarkably, even as the federal government is dishing out hundreds of billions of dollars to the financial industry, the Washington Post still refuses to note this dangerous act of protectionism. In an article discussing warnings from the WTO about the dangers of protectionism, the Post only mentions completely trivial acts of government protection. The inefficiencies caused by the government’s subsidies for the financial industry are almost certainly hundreds of times larger than sorts of protection discussed in the article.

President Obama Holds Virtual Town Hall Meeting (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
In an event the White House billed as the first virtual presidential town hall meeting in American history, President Obama today took six out of 104,097 questions submitted online from citizens, and six from regular people gathered in the East room… The six questions chosen from those submitted to Whitehouse.gov were the top vote-getters in their categories… In the second part of the town hall meeting, individual citizens chosen by unions and the Chamber of Commerce to attend, asked questions about health care, education, and taxation on small businesses.
Real Clear Politics has a transcript of the entire event.

President Expresses Anger with Automakers, Plan for Industry to be Announced Likely on Monday (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
A woman from Michigan whose family members who work for GM and Ford prompted President Obama to provide a sneak preview of an announcement about automakers to likely take place on Monday. “What specific steps do you see your administration taking about the health of the auto industry?” he was asked at a town hall meeting… Mr. Obama said as a “general philosophical approach” he believes “we need to preserve a U.S. auto industry…but the price is that you’ve got to finally restructure to deal with these long-standing problems. And that means that everybody is going to have to give a little bit — shareholders, workers, creditors, suppliers, dealers — everybody is going to have to recognize that the current model, economic model, of the U.S. auto industry is unsustainable.”

Obama to netroots: “I don’t know what that says about the online audience” [snicker] (by lambert at Corrente)
“THE PRESIDENT: Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy — (laughter) — and job creation. And I don’t know what this says about the online audience – (laughter) — but I just want — I don’t want people to think that — this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy — (laughter) — to grow our economy. (Applause.)”

Now, I’m betting that the drive for marijuana, er, reform skews young — and it certainly doesn’t skew Conservative (though possibly libertarian). In other words, Obama just dissed his own base, all for the sake of a few laughs from his new found buddies in the East Room’s gilt chairs. Hilarity ensues at The Obama 527 Formerly Known as Daily Kos, where the number one diary as of 11:00PM tonight is a terrific defense of marijuana legalization, which somehow fails to mention The One’s views on the subject, expressed that very day.

Now Hillary has been talking to ordinary people for many years.  She never got any credit for it, though, because she hasn’t used shiny new toys to do it.  See, Hillary’s more interested in what the people have to say than what new technologies can be used to hear them say it.
Roundtable Visit with Students in Mexico (by Alegre)
As many of you know, Hillary visited over 80 countries as First Lady and Senator, and that was before she became our Secretary of State.  Now I’ve met a few of the folks who made those trips with her and they said she makes a point of getting outside the bubble to hear what folks like us have to say.  It’s important to her to get the full picture of what’s happening in a country and you can’t do that by just talking with heads of state.

To anyone who’s paying attention, it won’t come as a surprise to hear that she’s still in touch with a lot of the people she’s met at those round-tables and living room chats.  I would imagine the information she gets from her friends will help her immensely as she travels the world as out top diplomat. On her latest trip to Mexico City and Monterrey, Hillary sat down with some students and got their take on what’s happening in their country, and to answer a few questions.
Click through to read the transcript of the discussion.

Kyl, McConnell skip Obama’s briefing on Afghanistan. (Think Progress)
President Obama has long refrained from detailing the particulars of his plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying he will only do so after conducting a strategic review of the situation. This week, the administration announced that it will will soon release the details of the review. But Senate GOP leaders skipped Obama’s briefing on the strategic review [Thursday], opting for a “multi-member meeting”… “This was nothing more than a snub — pure and simple,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide.

In New Afghan Strategy, Obama Will Add Troops (New York Times)
The president plans to further bolster U.S. forces in Afghanistan and will set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx (New York Times)
Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Afghan Taliban leader, persuaded the Pakistani Taliban to focus their efforts on the fight in Afghanistan against American troops.

Bomb kills nearly 50 at Pakistan mosque (AP)
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers for Friday prayers in a town near the Afghan border, killing at least 48 people and injuring scores more, officials said.

Commentary: How U.S. aid ends up financing the Taliban (McClatchy)
Mirahmad, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was delighted when he learned that the state-sponsored National Solidarity Program was about to provide $40,000 to dredge an irrigation canal.

Freddie Mac’s Duel With Regulator: Does It Report Government’s Role in Its Losses? (Washington Post)
Half a year after the government seized Freddie Mac, confusion about its role is stoking tensions between the company and its regulator, including a dispute this month over how much the mortgage giant should reveal to private investors about its financial troubles. Federal officials who took over Freddie Mac stopped short of nationalizing the company, leaving it partly in private hands. This means Freddie still has to answer to investors and file financial disclosures.

But when Freddie Mac’s executives concluded a few weeks ago that they had to disclose that the government’s management of the McLean company was undermining its profitability and would cost it tens of billions of dollars, the firm’s regulator urged it not to do so, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Freddie Mac executives refused to bend. The clash grew so severe that they threatened to go to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees corporate disclosures, to secure a ruling that the regulator’s request was out of line. The company’s regulator backed down, the sources said.

Top Risk Officers Remain at Insurer’s Helm (Wall Street Journal)
Inside American International Group Inc., a group of top executives called the Credit Risk Committee oversaw some of the company’s biggest bets, such as the insurer’s foray into credit-default swaps. But even after a $173 billion government bailout, this group, which reviewed and approved risk-taking decisions, remains largely unchanged. At least five of the 10 committee members have served for years, according to internal company documents. Some served as far back as 2003 and 2004, the documents show.

Drug Agents Raid SF Medical Marijuana Clinic (CBS 5)
One week after President Barack Obama’s top law enforcement official seemed to indicate the feds would no longer raid pot clubs, DEA agents busted a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco Wednesday night. As agents carried large plastic containers of marijuana plants out of Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard Street, a small crowd of protesters formed a gauntlet outside the door, booing the agents and chanting, “our medicine is marijuana … listen to Obama!” DEA spokeswoman Casey McEnry told CBS 5 the documents regarding the raid are sealed, so the DEA was not able to give any details.

I.R.S. to Ease Penalties for Some Offshore Tax Evaders (New York Times)
The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure to bring in money to the faltering economy, plans to give offshore tax evaders a big break. The agency announced on Thursday a plan that lowers a penalty levied on wealthy Americans who stash billions of dollars overseas to evade taxes… The goal, Douglas Shulman, the I.R.S. commissioner, said during a briefing “is to get taxpayers who have been hiding assets offshore back into the system.”
I don’t see what’s in it for the tax cheats.  Why should they do anything but keep on cheating?

Can Congress afford to keep Bush tax cuts for middle class? (McClatchy)
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said he intends to introduce a bill Thursday to make Bush-era tax cuts aimed at the middle class permanent, despite warnings from tax experts who questioned the cuts’ effectiveness and whether the country can afford them.

Ex-Lobbyist in Running for U.S. Attorney’s Job in Alexandria (Washington Post)
A former corporate lobbyist has emerged as a top candidate for U.S. attorney in Alexandria, raising questions about how his appointment would square with the Obama administration’s efforts to change the culture of Washington, according to legal and political sources.

We can sentence a shortstop for lying to Congress, but Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and Yoo are still on the street (by lambert at Corrente)
Shortstop Miguel Tejada gets a year’s probation for misleading Congress in a steroids investigation. Fucking pitiful. Just pitiful.

Fighting Bad Press with Google (Political Wire)
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is using Google Ad Words to respond to an unfavorable New York Times story this morning on her history of defending tobacco companies as a young lawyer. If you enter “gilibrand tobacco” or “kirsten gillibrand” into Google you’ll get an ad at the top of the search results proclaiming, “Gillibrand Fights Tobacco.” The ad links to a page on her campaign website highlighting her anti-tobacco record. Phil Singer: “This is the future of rapid response.”

Coleman Donor Ordered Payments (Political Wire)
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that a former CFO of a Texas company controlled by a close friend of Norm Coleman said in a deposition last week that he was ordered to pay $100,000 to a Minneapolis insurance agency where Coleman’s wife was employed — even though their was no indication of any services received.

Carnahan Leads Both Potential Rivals (Political Wire)
A new Wilson Research Strategies (R) poll in Missouri finds Robin Carnahan (D) leading both of her potential Republican opponents in the 2010 U.S. Senate race. Carnahan edges Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), 47% to 44%, and tops Sarah Steelman (R), 47% to 39%. The survey’s margin of error is four points.

Stimulus tensions rise between Palin, state GOP lawmakers (McClatchy)
Tension is rising between Gov. Sarah Palin and state legislators over the federal economic stimulus money, with lawmakers saying there is a communications breakdown with the governor over what money the state should take.

Real plumbers rip Joe the Plumber for shilling against the Employee Free Choice Act. (Think Progress)
Greg Sargent reports that Joe the Plumber has been tapped by the anti-labor Americans for Prosperity to do “a series of events throughout Pennsylvania rallying opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act… Joe the Plumber may not represent the average worker — or at least not the average plumber. Remember that Joe never had a plumbing license, and many of the people in that profession are members of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry (UA). UA political and legislative director Rick Terven responded to the latest news, saying, “Real plumbers want and need the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to empower themselves to join a union, without fear of intimidation or losing their jobs. Joe the Plumber doesn’t speak for real plumbers.”

A DREAM DEFERRED: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
Ten years ago, it would have seemed like a dream–the notion of having two nightly cable programs driven by progressive outlooks… Countdown and Maddow are now on the air–and the clowning and dumbness are sometimes quite massive… The one show is now a cathedral to dumb. The other show could still rule the planet. But progressives have to pressure their broadcasters, just as Maddow has (correctly) said that progressives should pressure their pols.

Then again, it might not (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Boy, the press never tires of reporting on what might pop up as a problem for the president, does it? Especially in terms of how the public might react to X,Y, or Z… Might be helpful for the press to simply, y’know, see what happens and then report it as news.

Interviewing woman who “turn[ed] to exotic dancing to get [herself] out of financial trouble” Fox News aired titillating photos (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Your World captions ask if Geithner “call for regulation” is a “power grab,” attempt to “create his own ‘regulatory’ kingdom” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

The Red Scare Index: 63 (by Karl Frisch at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Here are the numbers for yesterday, Wednesday, March 25, 2009:
TOTAL: 63
Socialism, Socialist, Socialistic: 45
Communism, Communist, Communistic: 17
Marxism/Marxist: 1

Coulter still smearing Soros as Nazis collaborator (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Morris claims media put “mob hit” on Palin (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
It was very similar to Morris’ “mob hit” on Hillary.

Beck calls Cuomo a “poster child” for “mob tactic,” claims Geithner sounds like he’s in the “Corleone administration” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Hannity promo asks if Obama budget is “a way for the government to completely control our lives” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Hannity graphic declares Obama “Commissar-In-Chief” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Controversy lifts Rush’s ratings.
Rush Limbaugh says attacks on him by democrats have “backfired.” The proof is in the PPM data from several large markets. “These audience growth rates are phenomenal,” he says. Limbaugh’s show has seen cume and share gains in every PPM market.

Limbaugh: Obama “is a gutless wonder; he is seeking as much chaos and depression among average Americans as he can get” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: “They know [Obama is] lying through his teeth and they still support him. It just mean this: what women have always known, ‘cheat on me, just don’t tell me about it’ “ (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Discussing upcoming “Earth hour,” Limbaugh calls Obama “an extremist tyrannical president” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh refers to MSNBC’s Brewer, Francis as “info-babes,” then amends to “anchors” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: Geithner testified about “how he intends to destroy our capitalist system with Barney Frank banging the gavel in support” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Steyn on Abu Ghraib: “Yeah, it was a guy, whatever it was, the banana and the Victoria’s Secret panties. I mean, big deal” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Kudlow claims global warming “is now being disputed for global cooling” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Savage: A “progressive is, basically a pervert covering it up with liberal politics” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Actually, when it comes to sex scandals, perverted or otherwise, Republicans have Democrats beat by miles and miles and miles (click here and scroll down).

Jobs or lives? Tobacco makes its case against regulation (McClatchy)
Tobacco manufacturing jobs, which pay more than twice the average salary of other private industries in North Carolina, are “under siege” by tax increases and other government proposals, growers and their advocates told lawmakers here Thursday.

Media Matters for America headlines

• CNN ignores GOP contradiction in criticizing Geithner’s proposal as “power grab”

• Michael Reagan falsely claimed Dems’ law told AIG to “pay the bonuses”

• AP ignores GOP contradiction in criticizing Dem plan similar to its own

• Hannity falsely claimed Obama has proposed UK-style nationalized health care

• LA Times touts McCain as a “key Republican” in immigration debate, but ignores campaign flip-flop

• NY Times mag sends a sports and music writer to do a science writer’s job

• Will media note House GOP has proposed a plan that its own leader called a power grab?

• NY Times mag profile of global warming skeptic uncritically repeats false comparison with ’70s global cooling theory

• The right’s toxic assets

• After devoting extensive coverage to Geithner hearing on AIG, cable networks all but ignore live testimony on Treasury powers

• Return to (poor) form: MSNBC again drops the ball on disclosing McCaffrey’s DynCorp ties

Fargo uses social networks to fight floodwaters
When Kevin Tobosa got word Thursday that a friend needed help building a sandbag dike, he immediately posted a status update on his Facebook page: “Heading to 2825 Lilac Lane in North Fargo — needs to be raised another 2 feet.”

Australia says Web blacklist combats child porn
Australia’s communications minister has defended a proposed Internet blacklist as necessary to combat child pornography but admitted that at least one site had been wrongly blocked during trials.

E.U. Telecom Law Set to Enshrine the Right to Information
A Europe-wide law forcing Internet service providers to cut subscribers off from the Internet if they illegally download copyright-protected music or movies isn’t going to happen as part of an ongoing review of telecom rules, telecom commissioner Viviane Reding said in an interview.

AT&T to start sending copyright warnings
AT&T Inc., the nation’s largest Internet service provider, will start sending warnings to its subscribers when music labels and movie studios allege that they are trafficking in pirated material, according to an executive. The phone company thus joins other major ISPs that either go beyond legal requirements or interpret their duties under the law to mean that they have to forward such notices.

Canada makes 57 arrests in child porn crackdown
Nearly 60 people have been arrested in what Canadian police said on Thursday was the country’s largest investigation into child pornography on the Internet.

Newspaper Ad Revs Dropped 16.6 Percent In ‘08; Online Slipped 1.8 Percent (Paid Content)
The figures are in, and last year was the worst in newspaper history: Ad revenues fell 16.6. percent to $37.8 billion in 2008, according to the latest figures from the Newspaper Association of America. As for the online slice, 2007’s 18.8 percent gain feels very far away, as website sales slipped 1.8 percent to $3.1 billion.

Newspapers Need a New Business Model — Now (by Jon Friedman at Marketwatch)
Now that two of the nation’s best-regarded newspapers are taking dire actions, all bets are off. From now on, bad news across the newspaper spectrum will have to be accepted as more than simply a risk of doing business. It will be treated as routine.

How to Become a ‘Death of Newspapers’ Blogger (by Paul Dailing at the Huffington Post)
Times are tough, my freelance work is drying up. That’s why I’ve decided to become a “Death of Newspapers” blogger. I’ll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen, and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening.

A Look at GlobalPost’s Business Model, Site Navigation (by Barbara Iverson at Poynter Online)
GlobalPost launched in January with an ambitious mission, proclaiming on its home page to be “a new voice for global news,” and an interesting revenue stream that combines advertising, syndication and premium membership. In an introductory video, the site pledges to “fill the void left as traditional media cuts back and in many cases abandons the mission of international reporting.” Its business model is like the “freemium” model that Chris Anderson described in Wired magazine last year.” A small percentage of paying users, he explained, make it possible for content to be free for most of the audience.

GlobalPost stories are free to everyone, but premium subscribers ($199 a year) get extra features, one of which is the ability to submit story ideas that the site’s correspondents may or may not pursue…
Click through for more.

Lachlan Murdoch Mulling Investments; Not Ruling Out News Corp Return (Paid Content)
In danger of becoming the forgotten man of the Murdoch family after stepping down as a senior News Corp executive in 2005, Lachlan Murdoch is keen to tell the world he’s still there and still interested in media investments… For him, perhaps not surprisingly, the best online model is the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal—”all newspapers have struggled aside from that.” Echoing what many newspaper executives think about the rise of free news, he worries that “consumers have now got used to that, so it’s difficult to get people to pay, and that’s what we have to—as an industry—correct.”

‘Christian Science Monitor’ Publishes Final Daily Edition 
As the final daily issue of the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor was put to bed Thursday, the newspaper was planning its rebirth as a spruced-up weekly — and bigger Web player.

Changes at the Christian Science Monitor
Editor’s Note: As of today, we are shedding print on a daily basis. But the Monitor itself — the century-old journalistic enterprise chronicling the world’s challenges and progress — is becoming more daily than ever. And with our new weekly print edition, the Monitor is becoming more vital than ever.

Imagine There’s No Sports Page
The future of newspapers is uncertain, and that makes a difference for fans. While there’s a growing number of blogs and other online outlets devoted to covering Philly sports, many of them rely on the reporting provided by the Inquirer and Daily News as a key foundation of their own work.

Washington Post, New York Times seek new cost cuts
Two of the most respected U.S. newspaper publishers, The Washington Post Co and The New York Times Co, are embarking on new cost cuts in the face of dramatic declines in advertising revenue. The Times said it laid off 100 workers and is cutting non-union salaries. It is also asking unionized employees to accept similar concessions to avoid layoffs in the newsroom. The Post is offering a new round of buyouts to newsroom, production and circulation employees, and said it could not rule out laying off staff.

Washington Post Publisher: Buyouts Could Deplete Talent
Katharine Weymouth, publisher of The Washington Post, admits she is concerned that this latest round of buyouts could further reduce the paper’s veteran talented staffers. But at a time when newspapers are seeing some of their worst financial problems ever, she contends it is necessary.

Former P-I staffers hope to launch new journalism Web sites
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s print death has spawned at least two local initiatives to launch new Web sites devoted to in-depth journalism, and to explore new ways to pay for it. Laid-off P-I reporters and editors are involved in both efforts. One group has been talking with public broadcasters, the other with academics.

Is That an Ad on the Cover of ESPN?
Having seen Esquire applauded by the American Society of Magazine Editors for implanting an ad within its cover, ESPN The Magazine is taking things further with an ad unit that, on the face of it, would seem to violate the group’s guidelines governing the independence of editorial content from advertising.

Looking for Someone to Blame for the Magazine Industry’s Implosion? Try Editors (by Mark Newman, Folio)
What has always baffled me is when editors are content with the status quo. However dynamic a magazine is, if it’s not growing or changing then it’s dying. I’ve seen that time and time again, especially at some of my past publications, many of which have died painful, pitiful deaths.

Nonprofit Hits JAMA Editors, Urges Inquiry
A nonprofit group that monitors industry links to medical research called for the suspension of the top two editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and an investigation into allegations that they threatened a researcher who criticized a study published in the journal.

Blender Magazine Folds
Blender is no more. The music magazine has followed so many other publications into the ether amidst a restructuring at parent company Alpha Media Group. It will continue to live online. Alpha also announced that Maxim and Maxim.com are merging their editorial operations.

As economy slumps, arts groups suffer, Congress told
Though audiences are flocking to plays and musical performances, the slumping economy could dim the stagelights, arts advocates told Congress Thursday in a bid to shore up support for arts funding.

CBS Radio’s online cume jumps 13%.
The AOL Radio and Yahoo-Launchcast alliances keep CBS Radio at the top of the streaming heap. Its webcasts were heard by 5.2 million people last month, an increase of 600,000. Ando Media says Entercom also saw a big (52%) jump in audience.

BIA: Online up $132 million a year.
Radio spot revenues will remain challenged for the next several years, but BIA economists are calculating an average growth rate in digital dollars of 30%. That would give radio $908 million of online revenues by 2013, up dramatically from last year’s $247 million.

Station picks people over streaming.
In an era where every dollar counts, two of Journal’s four Boise stations are no longer streaming. GM Bob Rosenthal says savings could go to keep a part-timer. Plus there’s not much revenue from in-stream ads.

Ugly Betty’s Mode After Hours: A Missed Opportunity (by Liz Shannon Miller, Salon)
Mode After Hours, a webseries spun off from the popular ABC seriesUgly Betty, consists of five-minute wacky adventures with Marc (Michael Urie) and Amanda (Becki Newton), two assistants at the fashion magazine around which the soap opera/comedy hybrid revolves. The first episode, Big Package, reveals what Amanda does with many of the packages that come across her desk; in the second, April Fools (released, oddly, a solid week before April 1), the two plot nasty pranks to pull on Betty. The “after hours” gimmick boils down to setting the two actors loose on the show’s pre-existing sets for five minutes of bantering. It’s a low-budget enterprise, well-produced and cleverly written…

[T]he series is being updated weekly to bridge the six-week gap between Betty’s last new episode, March 17, and its return on May 7 — a clever way to keep the show alive in the minds of its audience… The first season of Mode After Hours, according to Alexis Rapo of ABC.com at NewTeeVee Live, racked up 8.5 million views last September, and there’s no reason to think that this new run of episodes won’t be just as successful. But I do wish that this had been seen as a two-part opportunity — a chance to make new friends, even while they kept the old.  Website for this show »

Here’s another way ABC is raising money:
Ugly Betty ”Guadalajara” Jersey Tee
Share Betty’s love for Guadalajara with this festive “Guadalajara” tee. This tee features the words “Guadalajara” along with the Ugly Betty logo and other images.

Could Disney Join Hulu? Sources Say Talks Are Serious (Paid Content)
The Walt Disney Company could wind up with an equity stake in Hulu in exchange for adding ABC programming to the NBC Universal-News Corp joint venture, a source familiar with the situation tells paidContent. It’s not clear how much of Disney’s television programming is involved beyond ABC—a second source says all Disney content has been discussed but it centers on ABC; other possibilities could include ESPN and, if not the Disney Channel, some offshoots. The discussions, dormant for a while, have picked up again recently and are described as “serious” by both sources.

Research Report: Youngsters Not Abandoning Live TV
According to the Video Consumer Mapping Study .. people aged between 18-24 watched only 5.5 minutes of ‘computer video,’ daily compared with 209.9 minutes of live television. DVR playback accounted for 17.2 minutes a day. Across all ages groups, live television still accounted for 309.1 minutes of viewing a day compared to only 14.6 minutes of playback TV and 2.4 minutes daily spent watching online video.

Who Watches the Most TV and Video? Young Boomers
New Study Parses 952 Days of Watching Screens

Cable News Blues (Center for American Progress)
Cable news may be the only healthy part of the journalism business, but that’s bad news for the rest of us, write Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory.

Dylan Ratigan Out at CNBC After Flare-Up
There was high drama at CNBC yesterday as Fast Money anchor Dylan Ratigan quit — today will be his last day on-air — and an insider is blaming his battles with network big Susan Krakower. “She’s been ignoring him for months and he couldn’t get the attention he deserved,” the insider said.

‘Trivial Pursuit’ goes high-tech
The arrival of Trivial Pursuit on the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 2 and PS3, and Microsoft Xbox 360 brings the classic Hasbro board game to a new generation of gamers in high-tech fashion.

@ GDC: NeuroFocus Sells Gaming Companies On Brainwave Research (Paid Content)
At GDC, neuroscience-based marketing firm NeuroFocus rolled out NGame, a suite of products that apply brainwave research principals to game design. The idea is to help developers home in on factors like which characters, game-play mechanics and graphic designs appeal most to their target demographic in advance, so that the game stands a better chance of success… The cost of an average neuromarketing research project starts out at about $50,000, with more expensive tests topping the six-figure mark.

Loudcrowd: Discover New Music While Playing Games in a Virtual World (Mashable)
What Loudcrowd does extremely well is pair interactive game play with indie tracks for a fun-loving music-driven experience. Loudcrowd has a virtual world feel and game play that reminds us of Playfish Facebook games. With music in the mix and a part of each game, challenges become an entertaining way to pimp out your character.

TheKnot Sends Out Invitations For Hyperlocal Gatherings; 75 Microsites Unveiled (Paid Content)
As part of its continuing efforts to expand its social media offerings, weddings-related content website The Knot is creating 75 hyperlocal sites to attract small businesses as national advertising dries up, WSJ reports. The sites will have the name of the locality and end with “.weddings.com,” as Ozarks Weddings and Orange Count Weddings.

Hyperlocalism isn’t exactly a new thing for TheKnot. In print at least, it has long published 17 regional mags. Apart from building on that aspect of its business, TheKnot’s strategy can also be seen as a way to organize some of the purchases it has made this past year, such as recent acquisitions WedSnap, developer of Weddingbook, a Facebook app, and the community site Breastfeeding.com, as well as last year’s local pregnancy guide, The Bump.

Online Age Quiz Is a Window for Drug Makers
Takers of the popular online RealAge test are handing out valuable data to drug companies.

Boomers zero in on social networks
Whether it’s congressmen Twittering during presidential speeches, parents connecting with high school flames on Facebook or empty-nesters planning group outings on grown-up sites such as Eons.com, Baby Boomers are speeding up the Web’s ongoing metamorphosis from limitless void to global watering hole.

Facebook Seeking Up To $100 Million In Financing (Paid Content)
Facebook has raised $500 million so far, but with costs mounting and ad-revenue growth slowing, that’s not enough. BusinessWeek reports that the social-networking site is looking for credit lines of up to $100 million to finance the lease of new servers, which it needs to support its growing membership… As the ranks of Facebook members have grown, so have the company’s costs. But the company’s revenue hasn’t kept up.

When Stars Twitter, a Ghost Writer May Be Lurking
In its short history, Twitter has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians, and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online. But in many cases, celebrities and their handlers have turned to outside writers — ghost Twitterers, if you will.

10 iPhone Apps to Manage Your Job Search on the Go (Mashable)
These days, the job search is happening 24/7, and it’s important to arm yourself with tools that can help provide you with an advantage. You can create a social media resume, connect with recruiters on Twitter, and if you have an iPhone, there are several useful applications you can use to track job listings and networking opportunities on the go. [Click through for reviews of] ten apps that will help you own your online identity, build a strong database of professional contacts, and locate a job in your area in a flash.

Google Mobile App For BlackBerry Gets Voice Search
BlackBerry users can join the Google search using your voice party now according to the Google Mobile blog… The service supports both U.S. and British English according to the announcement.
Click through for a download link.

Google Plans to Lay Off 200 Workers
Google said Thursday that it would cut about 200 employees from its sales and marketing organization, the third and most significant round of layoffs at the company this year. Google, which announced the layoffs in a blog post, said that the cuts would reduce overlap between different groups and speed up decision making. Omid Kordestani, Google’s senior vice president for global sales and business development, said the cuts were meant to address mistakes the company had made during its phase of rapid growth.

Google Aims to Connect Ads for TV, YouTube
Google’s director of television ads, Michael Steib, said in an interview that the company is working on technology that allows advertisers to buy ads across Google TV, which sells on-air commercials; YouTube; and video on other Web sites through the same interface.

The New Ad Frontier for Filmmakers (by Jon Fine. Business Week)
When the big ad agencies and media companies contract, gaps in the landscape form wherein new blossoms can sprout. One such newcomer is Maximum Entertainment, a production company that makes video ads using a stable of directors, almost all of whom come from the world of film.

Eight Hours a Day Spent on Screens, Study Finds
In a world with grocery store television screens, digitally delivered movie libraries and cellphone video clips, the average American is exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions a day. In fact, adults are exposed to screens — TVs, cellphones, even GPS devices — for about 8.5 hours on any given day.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

@BarackObama Updates His Twitter! (by Adam Ostrow at Mashable)
Barack Obama, Twitter’s second most popular user (CNN has passed him), updated his Twitter account [Wednesday] for the first time since taking office. The update is to promote the President’s online town hall, which encourages citizens to submit questions via The White House website. Obama will be responding to some of the most popular questions – determined by users voting them up ala Digg – via video on Thursday.

Obama turns to Web to bypass news media (AP)
President Barack Obama took questions from the White House press corps on Tuesday.. On Thursday, he is taking to that same room for another public grilling — this time by regular folks armed with questions submitted via the Internet and in person, as part of a political strategy to engage Americans directly. “It’s a way for the president to do what he enjoys doing out on the road, but saves on gas,” press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday.

Obama’s Prime Time Pitch (FactCheck.org)
President Obama sometimes strayed from the facts or made dubious claims during his hour-long evening news conference March 24.

• He said his budget projections are based on economic assumptions that “are perfectly consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying.” Not true. The average projection by leading private economists is now for substantially less economic growth than the administration’s forecast assumes.
• He said he is reducing “nondefense discretionary spending” to less than it was under the past four presidents. Not true. His own forecast for the final budget of his four-year term puts this figure higher than in many years under Reagan, Clinton or either Bush.
• He said he was “angry” about “inexcusable” bonuses paid to AIG executives. But he glossed over the fact that his own aides insisted on watering down a Senate-passed amendment that might have prevented payment of such bonuses.
• He repeated that his budget is projected to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his term. That’s true, but deficits also are projected to shoot up again later unless big policy changes are made.

One of the most dramatic claims came not from Obama but from a reporter who asked about children “who are sleeping under bridges and in tents across the country” and who said 1 child in 50 is “homeless.” The truth is far less dramatic. The study he cited doesn’t just count children with no roof over their heads. It also includes those whose families are staying with friends or family members, in hotels and motels, in trailer parks or in housing deemed to be “substandard.”
You’re not homeless if you’re forced to live with relatives, or in a lean-to?  Why no, you’re a lucky ducky, ripe for being mocked by a man who makes more than $20 million a year.  See below.

Limbaugh on “bogus statistic that 1 of 50 American children are homeless”: “Would somebody tell me the last time you saw a kid sleeping under a bridge?” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Cities Deal With a Surge in Shantytowns (New York Times)
FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center. Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns.
And who was talking about this problem before the Ebony reporter asked his question at the press conference?  Nobody.

Homesteaders in the Hood (Slate)
To survive, everyone needs to have a place to be and to sleep, eat, and, let’s face it, go to the bathroom. For most of us, that place is the home. As rising unemployment pushes more people out of their houses and apartments, however, and growing numbers of Americans cannot find a place to perform these essential functions legally, they will have little choice but to break the law. And so some of them are turning to a strategy that has cropped up repeatedly in American history—squatting.

On the other hand, Rush has a lot of sympathy for Wall Street former millionaires and billionaires:
Limbaugh on people who work on Wall Street: “People want families like yours to suffer. They want you to understand how hard life is for them and that’s why they support Obama” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Hannity, too, is worried about the rich (like himself)
Hannity fear-mongering: “If the government takes too much money … just like if it was a terror attack against America, Americans will get hurt.” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Joel Pett

Cue the world’s smallest violin, cont’d (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
[T]he notion that networks automatically lost that ad money [because of Obama’s prime-time news conference] just isn’t true. That’s not how the business works because television advertising is not a zero sum game. Combined, networks control more than one hundred hours of primetime programming each week. Obviously, if some ads get bumped for breaking news (i.e. a White House press conference), networks have the ability to air a those handful of lost ad slots on other programs, just as networks have done for decades.

Presidential Press Conference, ‘Biggest Loser’ Win Tuesday (Advertising Age)
Rash Report: But 19% Fewer Viewers Tuned in for Obama Than in February

Unified Democrats mirror Obama budget priorities (AP)
In a springtime show of unity, congressional Democrats welcomed President Barack Obama to the Capitol Wednesday and unveiled budget blueprints that embrace his key priorities and point the way for major legislation this year on health care, energy and education.
Well, kinda unified.  These are DEMOCRATS we’re talking about.

Senate Democrats tell Obama they’ll cut his budget plan (McClatchy)
Senate Democrats gave President Barack Obama a warm welcome on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, even as they prepared to cut as much as $180 billion from his proposed $3.55 trillion fiscal 2010 budget.

Bayh: My Group Of Blue Dogs ‘Literally Has No Agenda’ Other Than Blocking Obama’s (Think Progress)
Yesterday, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, and several other progressive groups began running ads urging “moderate” Democratic members of Congress to “get on board with the president’s budget.” The ads are, in part, a response to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and 14 of his Democratic colleagues who are creating what they call a “moderate coalition that will meet regularly to shape public policy.” Bayh responded to the new ads late yesterday, telling Politico that his group of “moderates” should not be targeted because they have “no agenda”.

Obama Budget Chief on Hill Dems Plan to Scrap Middle Class Tax Cut: “We have two years to figure this out” (by Sunlen Miller at Political Punch, ABC News)
President Obama’s budget chief hinted that the president’s signature campaign issue – a middle class tax cut – will not likely survive a budget battle with Democrats on Capitol Hill… OMB Director Peter Orszag indicated that while 98% of the budget mark-ups in the House and Senate are on par with the administration’s budget blueprint, some campaign trail promises, like middle class tax cuts, may get left on the cutting room floor… President Obama ensured his middle class tax cut is locked in place for the next two years as a part of the stimulus package he signed into law last month, but OMB Director Peter Orszag told reporters … that the White House will have to use those two years to figure out how to keep that tax cut in place for middle class families beyond 2010.

Obama makes bold climate bill prediction: ‘We’ll get it done’ (New York Times)
President Obama struck an optimistic note [Tuesday] night on the prospects for signing a major global warming law, pledging also to craft a bill that takes into account economic concerns and the country’s regional differences over energy production. In his second primetime news conference since taking office, Obama nudged Congress to focus its attention on passing cap-and-trade legislation through regular order rather than get tangled up on the measure during a preliminary debate this month over the nonbinding budget resolution.

Reid open to fast-tracking health overhaul (AP)
Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated Wednesday he’s willing to move sweeping health care legislation through the Senate with a procedural maneuver that would block a GOP filibuster.

Obama Keeps Selling Budget (Political Wire)
“After several e-mail pleas and a nationwide door-knocking campaign, President Obama’s political arm will start airing a television commercial Thursday, urging voters to pressure Congress to approve his budget,” CNN reports. Said a spokeswoman: “The ad will run on national and D.C. cable — primarily MSNBC and CNN. This is just one of the many tools we’ll provide our supporters with, to help them make their voices heard and send a strong signal to Washington that the time for change is now.”

House GOP Will Introduce Its Own Budget (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
One day after being ridiculed by President Obama for not having a budget of their own, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives announced that they would unveil their proposal on Thursday… What the content of the proposal will include is not yet known. What is known is this: the DNC might have to finally adjust its “Party of No” clock. Though, to be fair, there don’t appear to be plans for the Senate GOP to follow their House counterparts.

GOP Budget’s Attack On Obama Health Care Plan Echoes 1993 Harry And Louise Ads (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
The House GOP’s alternative budget released today is striking in one key way: It contains an attack on the Obama health care agenda that’s eerily reminiscent of the infamous 1993 “Harry and Louise” ads targeting Bill Clinton’s approach. The similarities will give the Dems fodder to argue that the Republicans want to rehash old debates and aren’t serious about advancing new ideas suited to the moment. The GOP attack could also undercut the party’s claim that it wants to work in good faith with Obama and Dems to fix health care. It’s also unclear what specifically the GOP is targeting, as Obama and Dems have not settled on an official plan yet.
And Obama’s attack on Hillary’s health care plan was “eerily reminiscent of the infamous 1993 ‘Harry and Louise’ ads”.  Sort of symmetrical, don’t you think?

Blaming Obama for a Bush Economy (by Joe Conason)
Ever since Election Day 2008, the usual suspects have been hard at work, deflecting responsibility from the Bush administration (and the Republicans in Congress) for the catastrophic effects of conservative policy enacted during the past eight years… But there is a double standard at work here. When a Democrat is elected president, he is responsible for economic contraction even if he has yet to be inaugurated for three months. When a Republican is actually president, he need not be held responsible, even well after he takes office. If that strikes you as inconsistent, then you are beginning to notice how blatant deception passes for conservative ideology…

[E]ven as critics roast President Obama and his Treasury secretary, honesty requires that they acknowledge that the problems faced by President Obama and Mr. Geithner are not of their making. He has held office since Jan. 20 — and if held to the Reagan standard, he deserves at least a year to begin correcting the Bush recession.
But requiring honesty would require honesty, Joe.

EU presidency: US economic plans ‘a road to hell’ (AP)
The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama’s plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as “the road to hell” that EU governments must avoid. The blunt comments by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to theEuropean Parliament on Wednesday highlighted simmering European differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy. It was the strongest pushback yet from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand.

Bad Czech (by Paul Krugman)
[T]he utter unwillingness of many European leaders to come to grips with the scale of this crisis is a very real obstacle to action.

Inflation in a Downturn, Snow in Summer (by Dean Baker)
It may have been rude, but it would have been appropriate to include some expert commentary when reporting on the criticism of the U.S. stimulus package by Mirek Topolanek, the prime minister of the Czech Republic and current holder of the rotating presidency of the European Union. Mr Topolanek complained that the stimulus package would lead to inflation. At the moment, the enormous amount of unemployment and excess capacity is putting enormous downward pressure on prices raising serious concerns of deflation. It is difficult to construct a scenario in which inflation will be a serious problem in the current environment.

Buying Toxic Assets with Bailout Money (by Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture)
The NYPost reports the two biggest banking wrecks, CitiGroup amnd Bank of America, have been aggressively buying toxic assets with bailout money, and goosing the MBS auctions. You can imagine why this might get people upset. I suspect its rather unavoidable. These banks have investment wings, and they are trolling for opportunities… If anything, this argues against bailouts and in favor of nationalization, firing management, wiping out S/Hs, zeroing out debt, haircutting bond holders, etc.
When will we ever learn?

Banks eager to pay back TARP loans (McClatchy)
For relatively strong banks, doing business with the government may be more trouble than it’s worth. Banks are publicly declaring their intent to pay back loans from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, as quickly as they can. They range from Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp., which is the country’s biggest bank, to tiny Iberia bank Corp. in Lafayette, La. The banks complain about the rules that the U.S. Treasury keeps imposing on them retroactively, sometimes in ways that seem arbitrary or driven by constituents’ anger. Some say they never needed the money but were cajoled into taking it by the Treasury, which wanted a show of industry support for its program.
They were just doing us a favor, taking our money!

Geithner to Outline Major Overhaul of Finance Rules  (New York Times)
The Obama administration will detail on Thursday a wide-ranging plan to overhaul financial regulation by subjecting hedge funds and traders of exotic financial instruments, now among the biggest and most freewheeling players on Wall Street, to potentially strict new government supervision, officials said… [T]he most striking new proposals, and the ones that may provoke the most heated opposition from the industry, would regulate so-called private pools of capital — hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital funds — and the gigantic market in financial derivatives, including instruments like credit-default swaps, the insurance like instruments that allow investors to hedge against bond defaults…

[A] growing number of lawmakers and policy makers are worried that hedge funds have become too big a part of the financial market to operate without government monitoring. Administration officials also want to prevent a repeat of the gigantic Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard L. Madoff.

The Fed is the Systematic Risk Regulator, Although Perhaps Not a Good One (by Dean Baker)
The Fed has been acting as the systematic risk regulator for the U.S. financial system. How else can we explain the decision of Alan Greenspan to intervene in the unraveling of the Long-Term Capital Hedge Fund or his intervention to stop the 1987 stock market crash? Obviously, the Fed fell down on the job big time in the current crisis, but that is no reason to pretend that we did not have a risk regulator. If we want to avoid having this sort of problem happen again, we have to start by acknowledging that we did have a risk regulator who was unable to perform its job for some reason, just as the problem for the bank was that its security guard was for some reason unable to prevent the robbery.

Lender of last resort: Put it on the agenda! (by Guillermo Calvo, thanks to Economist’s View)
[F]inancial regulations have to be accompanied by liquidity facilities mimicking a global lender of last resort. Without them, financial regulations could even become counterproductive. Moreover, in the short run, large liquidity facilities should be put in place to protect emerging market economies from possible sudden stop episodes associated with the current crisis and consequent deleveraging.

During Fox News report on Geithner asking for “sweeping new powers,” Napolitano claims, “This is Josef Stalin without the bloodshed” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Emanuel’s Profitable Stint at Freddie Mac (Political Wire)
The Chicago Tribune reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel “made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.” Though his involvement with the troubled mortgage giant “has been a prominent point on his political résumé,” what is less known “is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation’s current economic mess.”

Obama nominee for deputy EPA chief withdraws (Reuters)
President Barack Obama’s nominee for the No. 2 position at the Environmental Protection Agency, Jon Cannon, removed himself from consideration on Wednesday, the latest in a string of withdrawals among nominees for administration posts.

Clinton: U.S. shares blame for Mexican drug violence (McClatchy)
The U.S. bears much of the blame for violent drug wars roiling Mexico because of its demand for drugs and its failure to stop illegal weapons from crossing the border, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday, accepting “shared responsibility” for the problem.
Somebody had to have the guts to say it.  But I assure you the right wingers will be demanding to know why she hates America.

Obama to Appear on Univision Awards Program (Variety)
With Mexico in the headlines of late, President Obama will talk directly to a massive Hispanic aud when he makes an historic appearance on Premio Lo Nuestro, Univision’s longest-running and most popular music awards show today.

Obama Raps Cable TV “Chatter,” Hits D.C. Culture As “Petty” (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
President Obama took a direct shot at Washington’s cable-driven inside-game culture during a speech he gave at a DNC fundraiser last night. From the White House transcript: “I know it can be easy, especially in Washington, to get caught up in the day-to-day chatter of cable television; to be distracted by the petty and the trivial, and to fall into the trap of keeping score about who’s up and who’s down…” Of course, calling on the cable talking heads at your press conference only empowers cable to drag down our discourse. Just saying…

But really, aren’t the big Dem power players who Obama needs to help pass his agenda — and who are easily distracted by cable-D.C. inside chatter, even when it’s way out of touch with public opinion — exactly the audience that needs to hear this?

Good Global News! (by Ann Lewis at NoLimits.org Blog)
Here’s news worth cheering: The State Department has announced it will resume funding for the United Nations Population Fund, an agency that provides reproductive and maternal health care around the world. For all of us who have followed the heartbreaking stories of women in developing countries suffering from problems like obstetric fistula, and the too-high rate of maternal deaths, this is a truly important moment.

Can BHO Quiet _________ ? (by Alegre)
Now I’m no fan of Nancy Pelosi, but I get a knot in my gut every time I see the press or the media ask the above question about a woman.  ANY WOMAN. Sure she led the charge in trying to shut Hillary up during the final months (ok throughout all) of last year’s primary season.  There are plenty of reasons to criticize Pelosi and gawd knows I’ve chimed in on that score – but there have got to be more legitimate ways of going about this than using the worn out notion of putting a gag in a woman’s mouth and shutting her up for the benefit of some guy.

In reading some of the articles linked from the … Daily Beast post (especially Cohen’s) I find myself liking Pelosi a bit more (ok some).  She’s standing up to BHO on some of the more progressive issues (like getting us out of Iraq sooner rather than later) and it’s reassuring to think maybe someone in Congress isn’t going to be so quick to toe the line as Hastert did for Bush. 

AFL-CIO May Work Against Specter In Republican Primary (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
One of the highest-ranking political operatives in the labor movement offered a none-too-subtle electoral threat to Sen. Arlen Specter on Wednesday, saying that the Pennsylvania Republican’s opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act could come back to bite him in his upcoming primary… Going forward, the AFL-CIO will be flooding Specter’s office with calls, letters, and delegations, urging him to reconsider his position. The union also will be stepping up its lobbying effort in favor of the legislation. One individual who could prove instrumental in the cause is President Barack Obama, who, reports say, is privately content with the notion that EFCA is now off the legislative table.

Joe The Plumber Campaigning On Specter’s EFCA Vote (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Even though Sen. Arlen Specter has let it be known that he will opposed the Employee Free Choice Act if that legislation comes to a vote, the battle to persuade him rages on. On Wednesday the AFL-CIO issued not-so-subtle political threats to the Pennsylvania Republican. The labor federation announced plans to flood Specter’s office with letters, calls and visits and potentially run advertisements pushing the Senator to change his mind. On Thursday, the opposing side followed suit, bringing out Joe the Plumber (among others) to urge Specter to vote against the union-backed legislation.

FedEx threatens to cancel Boeing jet orders: report (AP)
FedEx Corp is threatening to cancel the purchase of billions of dollars worth of new Boeing Co cargo planes if Congress passes a law that would make it easier for unions to organize at the package-delivery company, the Wall Street Journal said. FedEx may cancel plans to buy as many as 30 new Boeing planes should Congress pass a bill that would remove truck drivers, couriers and other employees at FedEx’s Express unit from the jurisdiction of the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926, the paper cited the company spokesman as saying.
Lambert dares to call it blackmail.

Lieberman Remains Unpopular in Connecticut (Political Wire)
The latest DailyKos/Research 2000 poll in Connecticut finds that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is the most unpopular politician in the state, with 54% viewing him unfavorably. In potential 2012 re-election matchups against two Democrats — Ned Lamont (D) and Richard Blumenthal (D) — with Lieberman running as an independent, Gov. Jodi Rell (R) wins both hypothetical races. The results: Rell 42%, Lamont 30%, Lieberman 25% and Rell 43%, Blumenthal 28%, Liemberman 25%.

Patrick Tanks in New Poll (Political Wire)
In Massachusetts, a new Suffolk University poll finds Gov. Deval Patrick (D) in deep political trouble. While Patrick’s favorability ratings are split — 44% to 43% — just 34% of state residents believe the governor deserves reelection while 47% think it’s time to elect someone else. Patrick is so weak that he loses to State Treasurer Tim Cahill in a Democratic primary, 35% to 30%, even though the Boston Herald notes Cahill says he’s not running.
That’s the guy who won using the oh so inspirational phrases created by David Axelrod’s before Obama prevailed using those same inspirational phrases.  Deval is having his “The Candidate” moment.

Steele Open To Running For President, Claims Limbaugh Blow-Up Was Planned (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Emerging from his self-imposed cone of silence, RNC Chairman Michael Steele gave an interview Wednesday in which he said he would consider a run for president and claimed to have strategically planned his recent confrontation with radio talk host Rush Limbaugh. Speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon, Steele said he “would think about” running for the White House but only if “that is where God wants me to be at that time.”

Jindal Sides With Limbaugh On Whether He Wants Obama To Fail: ‘It Depends’ (Think Progress)
[Tuesday], as President Obama was delivering his second press conference, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) spoke at the NRCC’s largest fundraiser of the year to an audience of more than 1,200 Republicans — including prominent luminaries like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). In his speech, Jindal turned to one of the major issues facing the GOP: whether it agrees with Rush Limbaugh’s statement that he wants Obama to fail. Without mentioning Limbaugh, Jindal criticized the recent focus on the remarks, claiming that anyone who disagrees with President Obama is treated as committing “treason.” On whether he personally wants Obama to fail, Jindal simply said, “it depends“.

Fred Thompson: Don’t Forget Me, I Want Obama To Fail, Too (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Fred Thompson (R-Tennessee Retirement Community) gets in on the act in an interview with CNN’s John Roberts: “‘“I want his policies that I believe take us in the wrong direction to fail,’ Thompson told Roberts on CNN’s American Morning…” I asked DNC spokesperson Hari Sevugan for a response. “After that presidential campaign, Fred Thompson knows a thing or two about failure,” Sevugan joked. Calling for Obama to fail does seem to guarantee airtime even to retired Republicans these days.

Schwarzenegger says he’s not seeking another office (McClatchy)
Kill the Arnold Schwarzenegger-for-U.S. Senate rumors – for now.

Donna Brazile Discovers Women (by Pacific John at Alegre’s Corner)
Posted without comment: “‘While I was on the platform watching Barack Obama take the oath of office, for the first time in my life I visualized a woman there,’ Brazile tells us. ‘I want to help chart that course.’“
It’s just breathtaking that she would say such a thing.  She broke the rules of the DNC to steamroll over the only woman ever to come close to winning the presidential nomination.

Happy (75th) Birthday Gloria! (by Alegre)
I’m delighted to learn that today is Gloria’s seventy-fifth birthday.  She blazed a trail for my generation and many more to come, and I hope you’ll all join me in wishing her a happy birthday today – and many more… We’ve come a long way baby, but there’s still a lot of work to do (she reminds us that despite Roe, abortion services are not available in 85% of US counties).  [Click through for a link to] a great interview [that] touches on issues like unequal pay, abortion rights, gender-based violence and same sex marriage, so check it out. 

Badge of Courage (by Liz Wing at NoLimits.org Blog)
Every now and then you are completely blown away by the courage and tenacity of a brave woman. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of those women. Rated the 24th Most Powerful member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2008 Congress.org Power Rankings, passing important legislation protecting our children, and making countless appearances on news programs, at age 42 she has become a powerful force. This week she released the startling news that last year she battled breast cancer, going through seven surgeries, including a double mastectomy and the removal of her ovaries, all while running for re-election, campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton, then, later Barack Obama and raising 3 children.

Wasserman Schultz is sponsoring legislation to help educate young women about the risk of breast cancer. The EARLY (Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young) Act is meant to bring education and awareness to young women and their doctors. “The EARLY Act will teach both young women and medical professionals alike about risk factors, warning signs of breast cancer and predictive tools such as genetic testing that can help women make informed decisions about their health” said Wasserman Schultz.
Click through for more information.

Shriver, Gingrich push for Alzheimer’s ‘Manhattan Project’ (McClatchy)
It was for her dad and millions like him that [Maria] Shriver testified Wednesday, pushing for increased attention to Alzheimer’s in the wake of a new report that suggests the disease “could very easily surpass even the current economic crisis in the damage it inflicts on individuals and our economy.” The report by the Alzheimer’s Study Group projects that Alzheimer’s-related costs to Medicare and Medicaid alone will top more than $1 trillion annually by 2050. “We have to put Alzheimer’s on the front burner, because if we don’t, Alzheimer’s will not only devour our memories, it will cripple our families, devastate our health-care system and decimate the legacy of our generation,” Shriver told the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging.

Her words on her father’s behalf earned her a standing ovation from the dozens of Alzheimer’s advocates who’d packed the ornate Senate hearing room, many of them wiping away tears as she spoke.

Health Insurers Owe Policyholders, But Pay Congress Instead (Capital Eye)
Members of a Senate Committee that today held the first part of a hearing to examine whether health insurance companies are failing to fully pay reimbursements to policyholders haven’t had any trouble themselves collecting money from these companies. In total, health insurance companies’ PACs and employees have given 25 members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation $3.3 million in campaign contributions since the 1990 election cycle, with 53 percent of that going to Democrats*. 

Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade.’ (Think Progress)
In a hearing [Wednesday] on adapting to climate change, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) denied the consensus on man-made climate change, saying it is “natural.” His solution to the warming planet? Just get some “shade”… “Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people adjust to nature,” he added. “Adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult.”
Click through to watch the video.

Dead-Eye Dick Cheney (Mis)fires Again (by Scott Horton at No Comment, Harper’s)
Sunday evening, President Obama responded in some detail to Dick Cheney’s claims that the security of all Americans depends upon imprisoning innocent people in depraved conditions outside of the rule of law. As Professor Jonathan Turley notes, the curious thing about Obama’s response is that it is so mild. Cheney’s statements are tantamount to an admission of his involvement in a serious criminal conspiracy. Moreover, Cheney actually brags about his criminality—he insists that he’s doing it because it’s good for us. When prosecutors decide which cases to charge, one concern is whether the crime has been committed in an open and notorious way. Cheney’s conduct on this score is off the charts.

As Turley says, “This is the best defined and most public crime I’ve seen in my lifetime.” Cheney is effectively building the case for his own criminal prosecution. It needs to happen, preferably before another coronary incident robs us of the opportunity to bring a serious criminal to justice.

Learning How to Think (by Nicholas D. Kristof)
Ever wonder how financial experts could lead the world over the economic cliff? One explanation is that so-called experts turn out to be, in many situations, a stunningly poor source of expertise… The expert on experts is Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts’ forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about. The result? The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board…

[T]he only consistent predictor was fame — and it was an inverse relationship. The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones. That had to do with a fault in the media. Talent bookers for television shows and reporters tended to call up experts who provided strong, coherent points of view, who saw things in blacks and whites. People who shouted — like, yes, Jim Cramer!… So what about a system to evaluate us prognosticators? Professor Tetlock suggests that various foundations might try to create a “trans-ideological Consumer Reports for punditry,” monitoring and evaluating the records of various experts and pundits as a public service. I agree: Hold us accountable! [Emphasis added.]

DUMB KILLS: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
Here at THE HOWLER, we hold an odd view. At present, we think the most interesting problems afflicting the media are those within our emerging liberal media… For one small taste of what we mean, let’s start with a weak news report in the mainstream press–in this morning’s Washington Post. Scott Wilson authored the report, with Al Kamen. Here’s how he began: “…The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase ‘global war on terror,’ a signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor.”… The headline writer made things a bit stronger: “‘Global War On Terror’ Is Given New Name”…

According to Wilson, someone in a DOD office sent an e-mail with a directive, saying it came from the OMB. Kenneth Baer, the OMB spokesman, said no such guidance had been given–that the e-mail was sent by a career civil servant who was stating his own opinion… Wilson at least lets readers know that his claim only “appears” to be true–and he quotes Baer’s denial. By way of contrast, on one of our biggest cable shows, we were treated to a long riff on the topic–and the riff offered no such disclaimers… [I]f progressives and liberals don’t save us from dumb, it’s fairly clear nobody will.
I’m proud to say that I saw this story, saw how weak it was, and didn’t post an excerpt.

Life inside the Village. Or, the Ed Henry debacle by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
CNN Headline: ”Behind the scenes: Ed Henry’s take on exchange with Obama.” (Isn’t the “behind the scenes” part priceless? Very VH1, we think.) The piece is all about Henry’s pre-debate “strategy” regarding which “provocative” question he was going to ask, and how he wanted to “make news” that night. See this Politico piece from earlier this week, which glorifies the pre-game stretching and warm-ups WH scribes now do before press conferences and how we’re supposed to actually care what goes into reporters forming and crafting their rather ordinary White House queries.

Interesting omissions… (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Politico editor and co-founder John Harris muses about his publication’s role and future in CJR.  Unless I’m missing something, there are a couple of concepts he pretty much ignores: focusing on what’s important, and getting the story right. There is, however, a lot about “driving the conversation” and “building franchises” and appealing to advertising.

Defaults In Commercial Real Estate Soar: Who Could Have Known? (by Dean Baker)
There’s nothing more entertaining that sight of surprised economists and economics reporters in the morning. There was a bubble in commercial real estate which is now collapsing, leading to record levels of bad loans. Who could have known?

USA Today Imagines a Surge of Homebuying (by Dean Baker)
USA Today told readers that low mortgage rates “trigger race to buy, refinance.” The second part of this sentence is true. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) index for applications for refinancing has soared in recent weeks. However, the MBA purchase applications index remains near its low point for this downturn.

Ford employee responds: ‘I agree with you about the rantings of the hopelessly pig-headed Mr. O’Reilly.’ (Think Progress)
Mark Schirmer, a spokesman for Ford Motor Company (which owns Lincoln and Volvo), contacted ThinkProgress this afternoon, in response to your emails calling on O’Reilly’s corporate advertisers to stop supporting the O’Reilly Harassment Machine. Schirmer — speaking for himself and not on behalf of Ford — said he agrees with the thrust of ThinkProgress’ criticisms of O’Reilly, but explained that Ford advertises on the show because it has high ratings… “I saw the tapes of O’Reilly ambushing Hertzberg of the New Yorker a few month back. It demonstrated how moronic O’Reilly really is.” He concluded that “what Bill O’Reilly does or says is not important.” Getting Ford back on its feet though, “that is important.”
No matter how you do it.  Principle be damned.

Fox & Friends hosts former mob boss to discuss “how Washington and the mob are acting alike” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Beck: Obama Is A ‘Manchurian Candidate’ Because He Uses A Teleprompter — But I Use One Too (Think Progress)
If there are two things Fox News’ Glenn Beck loves, it’s conspiracy theories and a good right-wing attack line on President Obama. So it’s no surprise that he embraced the conservatives’ current outrage over Obama’s use of a teleprompter, spending the first 10 minutes of his radio show today railing about it. Beck being Beck, he took it a step beyond others’ complaints, declaring that Obama’s use of a teleprompter is evidence that he’s a “Manchurian candidate”… Within seconds, however, Beck reversed course and insisted he’s “totally fine” with the use of a teleprompter, and admitted, “I do use a teleprompter from time to time”.
Click through to listen to the audio.

Gingrich says Democratic proposals “absolutely moves you towards a political dictatorship” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Discussing Obama “power grab,” Gingrich says Goldberg’s “frighteningly prescient” Liberal Fascism describes “how the left is thinking this year” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh repeats analogy that hoping Obama fails is like Steelers fan wanting Cardinals’ QB to fail in Super Bowl (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

On Savage Nation, Washington Times columnist Kuhner declared: “The pill and the condom have been the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism, and in its path, it is now destroying American culture” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Targeting the Poor: Some States Propose Drug Testing for Unemployment, Welfare Benefits (Dissenting Justice)
Several states are considering whether to test recipients of unemployment or welfare benefits for drug use. Although the federal government is contemplating giving a second trillion-dollar package to the banking industry, these states are targeting poor and middle-class individuals under the guise of fiscal responsibility… Proponents of the legislation … have linked the tests to fiscal soundness and protection of taxpayers.

But I have a question for legislators who believe the drug tests will protect taxpayers: Why not sponsor legislation requiring anyone — including legislators, governors, judges, recipients of small business assistance or “farm aid,” pensioners, owners of companies receiving tax abatements, participants in state-sponsored health care for the elderly, students receiving financial assistance or scholarships, and university professors — who receives state subsidies, financial assistance, or tax dollars to submit to drug screening? In order to avoid the very reasonable claim that they are targeting poor people, they should broaden their proposals.
Because it’s about humiliation, DJ.  You don’t humiliate members of the power structure, only the weak and helpless.

Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal ’70s Drug Laws (New York Times)
Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state’s strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation. The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison. The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.

Goodbye, homo economicus (by Anatole Kaletsky, thanks to Economist’s View)
Economics today is a discipline that must either die or undergo a paradigm shift—to make itself both more broadminded, and more modest. It must broaden its horizons to recognise the insights of other social sciences and historical studies and it must return to its roots. Smith, Keynes, Hayek, Schumpeter and all the other truly great economists were interested in economic reality. They studied real human behaviour in markets that actually existed. Their insights came from historical knowledge, psychological intuition and political understanding. Their analytical tools were words, not mathematics. They persuaded with eloquence, not just formal logic. One can see why many of today’s academics may fear such a return of economics to its roots.
About damn time.  Homo economicus is man as a consumer only.  He is totally amoral.

Media Matters for America headlines

• CNBC allows Gregg to forward small-business tax falsehood

• Denouncing death threats to AIG execs, Fox’s Kelly ignored colleagues’ violent rhetoric

• Fox & Friends hosts former mobster to compare Dems to crime family

• Hannity, Gingrich spread falsehoods to bolster Gingrich’s claim that Dems are moving U.S. toward “dictatorship”

• Conservative media run with dubious SkyNews claim of Obama “teleprompt blunder”

• LA Times erased word “torture” in describing Obama nominee’s criticism of Bush administration

Emergency Call on EU to Save Journalism
The European Federation of Journalists, (EFJ) has made an emergency call to the heads of all the political groupings in the European Parliament, warning that if the EU does nothing to save journalism, the sector is doomed.

Iran considering the death penalty for ‘offensive’ bloggers. (Think Progress)
Al Jazeera’s Nazanin Sadri reports that Iran is considering a new law that would allow the death penalty for “offensive” bloggers.
Click through to watch the video.

Police raid Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe’s home home over ‘censorship lists’
POLICE have raided a Wikileaks associate’s homes in Dresden and Jena after the website published a list of banned websites… “Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists – stay tuned.” Wikileaks, which offers an anonymous service, has previously published alleged web censorship lists from Thailand, Denmark, and Australia. A statement on Wikileaks’s website claims police were investigating the “distribution of pornographic material” and “discovery of evidence”.

With Limited Resources, UK Vows to Battle E-crime
A new U.K. police force dedicated to tracking down cybercriminals is gearing up to make the most of what one senior police official acknowledges is limited funding.

Facing a Shortfall, CBC Will Cut Jobs
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will cut about 800 jobs and try to sell assets to fight a growing financial shortfall caused by an advertising downturn.

Prosecutor sued over semi-nude teen photos case
The American Civil Liberties Union sued a Pennsylvania prosecutor on Wednesday over his threats to charge three teenage girls with child pornography for allowing themselves to be photographed partly clothed with cell phone cameras.

Pennsylvania ethics panel fines activist for talking to reporters
The founder of a taxpayers’ activist group was fined $500 by the Pennsylvania Ethics Commission for publicly discussing his complaint against politicians with newspaper reporters. He suing, saying the fine is “very, very chilling.”

My First Day on Twitter (by Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher)
A surprisingly useful experience. The “dumbing down” factor can’t be ignored, but I also came across numerous scoops that soon made their way to our main site or blogs. And don’t miss the Chris Walken page.

Flying Seminar in the Future of News (by Jay Rosen at PressThink)
As the crisis in newspaper journalism grinds on, people watching it are trying to explain how we got here, and what we’re losing. Lately, the pace has picked up. Here are twelve links to recent pieces about this process that form a kind of flying seminar on the future of news, presented in real time.

Reinvention, not rescue (by Jeff Jarvis)
I doubt it will get very far, but there’s another well-meaning but ultimately dangerous attempt to provide a government rescue for newspapers: a bill to enable papers to switch to not-for-profit, tax-free status from Sen. Benjamin Cardin… The obvious danger is government certifying what is and isn’t news and who does and doesn’t do it. Should my blog get to be a tax-free, not-for-profit enterprise? Who gets certified?

Further, Cardin’s proposal also would forbid papers as charities from endorsing political candidates. That takes more voices out of the democracy. Not good. But the real danger here is that these rescue attempts delay the inevitable. The sooner that papers reinvent themselves for the new age, the better. If this delays that inevitability, papers will only languish in the past and others will come and overtake them.

Do Some Good: Create Newspaper Ads (by Mike Hughes, The Martin Agency, writing in Advertising Age)
It’s time the advertising industry did something important. For our own self-interest — and for the common good — we need to start paying attention to newspapers again… I don’t think the newspaper industry is going to die anytime soon. With some well-publicized exceptions, most papers are surviving the economy’s near collapse. They might be holding on by their fingernails, but at least they’re holding on. But if the newspaper business is going to give us the content our industry feeds on — and if it’s going to give us the journalism the world needs — newspapers need to be robust.

If we don’t give them a fair shot at our budgets, they might never be healthy enough to do the job we want them to do. And we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

The Motley Fool Uses Exclusivity, Verbiage To Pitch Pricey Pro Product (by Staci D. Kramer at Paid Content)
David Gardner has a deal for me as a member of The Motley Fool: for just $1,499—a savings of $500 over the real $1,999 price—I can be one of the few, the proud, the members of Motley Fool Pro. While newsrooms and startups stress over whether people will pony up $120 or so a year for news and information, Gardner is using exclusivity (only a fraction of the 20,000-plus who already have “indicated interest” can sign up), time pressure (limited window that closes at midnight Wednesday) and hype (an e-mail totaling thousands of words, stuffed with charts and bold-faced factoids) to sign up subscribers to what essentially is a stock-picking service. Far be it for me to pass judgment on its value…

What if we pitched news like that? At those price points, not much but hysterical laughter. People pay for services like this because they convince themselves it’s an investment that can pay off. The newspaper campaigns that promise a certain dollar value of savings in Sunday coupons—one ad concept that so far doesn’t translate well online —probably come the closest, but they also sound like an encouragement to keep the inserts and dump the rest.

Another Industry Association, INFE, Cancels Annual Convention 
Add INFE, the association for financial executives, to the lengthening list of newspaper industry groups scrubbing their annual meetings this year. This is the first time in the 62-year history of INFE it is effectively cancelling a convention. 

Abrams Research to Launch Media Blog
Dan Abrams wants in on the media blogging and aggregation business. For the past several months, Abrams has been meeting with various New York-based media reporters, editors, and bloggers about the potential editorial venture. To date, nobody has signed on.
Dan Abrams was the only reporter on the O.J. trial who didn’t fall under the spell of the defense team.  Maybe he should go back to reporting.

‘AJC’ to Eliminate 30% of News Staff 
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on its Web site today that it will slash its full-time news staff by about 90 people. The company also will eliminate distribution to seven more outlying counties, reducing its circulation area to 20 metro Atlanta counties effective April 26.

Washington Post offers more buyouts
Publisher Katharine Weymouth says if the Post doesn’t “achieve meaningful staff reductions” through voluntary buyouts, there could be layoffs in the future. (She gave the same warning when buyouts were offered last March.) Memos to the staff don’t say how many buyouts the paper wants.

NYT Lays Off 100 On The Business Side; Cuts Salary For All Non-Union Staff, Including Sulzberger (Paid Content)
The New York Times Company is laying off some 100 NYT business-side employees and cutting non-union salaries across the board. NYFishbowl has the memo, which also outlines a “temporary” 5 percent salary reduction for all non-union employees at the NYT.  In an attempt at softening the blow, NYT execs say staffers can take an additional 10 personal days off over the next nine months. The memo contains a promise that salaries will return to current levels next year, adding, “Of course, such a decision depends on the state of our business.”

Sun-Times sports columnist Couch joins AOL
“I just wanted to start playing offense,” says Greg Couch. “All newspapers, not just the Sun-Times, you’re playing defense, you’re hanging on for dear life. AOL seems to have found their niche, and they’re thinking big.” Couch’s former colleague, Jay Mariotti, went to AOL last summer.

Hearst Makes Bid To Buy Remaining Stake In Hearst-Argyle (Paid Content)
Hearst Corp. wants to buy the remaining stake in local TV operator Hearst-Argyle. The company is offering $4 per share in cash, which Hearst says represents a 91 percent premium over Hearst-Argyle’s closing price on Tuesday. Just after Hearst’s announcement, Hearst-Argyle was up about 1.9 percent to $2.13. Trading was halted shortly afterward, MarketWatch reported. Hearst currently owns about 67 percent of the Hearst-Argyle’s outstanding shares of Series A common stock and 100 percent of its Series B common stock. That represents 82 percent of both the outstanding equity and general voting power of Hearst-Argyle.

Murdoch Tops Rich List, but Crisis Decimates His Wealth
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is once again Australia’s richest executive, but the financial crisis has halved his wealth. While Murdoch holds shares worth $3.4 billion, the value of his holdings is down $4.5 billion on last year.
Down more than 50%.  Wow.

E-Book Market Heats Up
Barnes & Noble Inc. has launched a free electronic-reader application for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry as general book sales flag and the e-book market heats up. The launch, by the bookseller’s Fictionwise e-book retailing unit, comes as consumers are increasingly using mobile devices as e-book readers. BlackBerry is releasing larger-screen devices that make reading easier.

Apple sued for promoting iPhone as eBook reader
An overseas communications firm is suing Apple for promoting its iPhone handset as a touchscreen digital book reader, a concept it claims to have patented over seven years ago.

Report: Celebrity Magazines May Never Recover from Recession
The consumer appetite for celebrity news has exploded in recent years. But shortsighted strategies, poor management and the recession have hit traditional celebrity media hard — so hard the nine magazines covering the space is too many, and consolidation is inevitable, says a new report.

In-car competition grows.
AT&T describes its CruiseCast service as a “total in-car entertainment” system. It will begin targeting drivers of all car models later this spring with a service that gives subscribers access to 20 channels of satellite radio and 22 television channels. But unlike radio, it’s far from free. AT&T says the equipment will cost $1299 and the monthly fee will be around $28.

Emmis sites add web TV.
It comes as a result of hooking up with Gen2Media which is developing online television outlets for Emmis New York and Los Angeles stations. Emmis VP Benjamin Finley says it gives advertisers targeted, quantifiable and measurable on-air and online exposure.

Station sells iPhone app.
Trend to Watch: A number of broadcasters have created free applications allowing listeners to tune into their station on their iPod. But Washington’s WAMU becomes the first to sell theirs. They’ll charge $1.99 for an app to access their popular bluegrass format.

CBS gives NTR an executive upgrade.
Off-air revenues continue to be one of radio’s growth areas so CBS Radio appoints its first-ever executive to oversee those efforts. Helen Leisengang has been named vice president of sales for integrated marketing. She’ll work with the company’s top ten markets to create concerts, business seminars and other off-air events.

LPFM bill takes on translators.
Senator Maria Cantwell (R-WA) has introduced a bill that would remove third-adjacent signal protection allowing as many as 3,000 new LPFMs. Her bill would also put LPFMs on equal footing with translators, which have had preference in the past.

Couric’s Comeback (by Rebecca Traister, Elle)
“People seem to take some sort of perverse joy in it,” Katie Couric says of last year’s premature grave-dancing. But after this election season, Couric’ ratings have risen modestly and she is receiving hosannas from those who not long ago were throwing matches on her pyre.

At 10 p.m., Jay Leno and the Newsmakers
NBC Starts Floating Ideas, Like One Guest a Night

NBC News Begs Its Employees Not to Make Them Pay Raises
NBC News has instituted an across-the-board freeze on raises for its executives and talent, even those with contracts guaranteeing them salary bumps. NBC News — and probably all of NBC Universal — is discreetly calling around and asking its on-air and off-air employees to take one for the team.

‘Motherhood’ Viewers: Hold the Ideas
“In the Motherhood,” which has its debut on ABC on Thursday, has been transformed from Web series into a traditional network sitcom.

Cartoon Network Embraces Live-Action Shows
Road to the Upfront: Network Enters Phase 2 of Rebranding

German Retailer Expected to Buy Music Download Firm
Metro, a German retailer, is expected to announce that it is buying a controlling stake in 24-7 Entertainment, which provides technology for online music downloads.

Project Playlist Adds EMI Music But No Facebook, MySpace; Still Being Sued (Paid Content)
Music social net Project Playlist is still barred by Facebook and MySpace but a deal with EMI Music adds considerably to the startup’s legit music firepower—and drops the number of majors still suing the startup to two. EMI Music is the second major to sign on, following a December deal with Sony Music Entertainment.

Hulu Gets Its First UK TV Shows, But For U.S. Eyes Only (Paid Content)
US VOD website Hulu has acquired its first set of rights to UK TV shows. The NBCU/News Corp venture signed a deal for distributor Digital Rights Group’s Channel 4 International and Portman repertoires, giving it series including Peep Show (pictured), Rude Tube, Underbelly, Queer As Folk and Green Wing. But while Hulu has stated its ambitions to launch in the UK and internationally, the shows will still only be available to Hulu’s viewers in the US, where the service is limited at present. Digital Rights Group (DRG) says more of its series will be added to Hulu “in due course”—and ”the company (Hulu) is actively seeking more current UK broadcast content to add to the service.”

MySpace Does Reality TV with Married on MySpace (Mashable)
MySpace is getting into reality TV with a new Web-based series called “Married on MySpace” that will chronicle one couple’s journey to their wedding day, with MySpace members driving much of the decision-making in planning the event. The process starts with couples submitting videos to MySpace and users voting on who should be featured. Once that has been determined, MySpace users vote on other aspects of the event, like selecting what the bride and groom wear, where they celebrate their bachelor and bachelorette parties, and the wedding location.

In all, there will be 13 websidoes of Married on MySpace, culminating in the selected couple’s wedding day. The series is being produced by Endemol USA, the company behind reality TV shows like Big Brother, Fear Factor, and Deal or No Deal.

Wikirank: Find What’s Trending on Wikipedia (Mashable)
Wikirank does for Wikipedia what sites like Compete do for websites. It’s a nifty analytics tool that tracks trending topics on the world’s largest online encyclopedia, displays the 10 most read articles in the last 30 days, and gives users the ability to compare stats for up to four different topics. Wikirank uses the actual usage data from Wikipedia servers to give visitors a better global or custom view of what’s happening across the information hub. Cooler features include the ability to graphically compare impressions on four different articles, embed graphs, view Wikipedia entries, and quickly search for related content on Google News, Twitter, or The New York Times.

Facebook survival guide for awkward adults
Since grown ups have quadrupled their likelihood of using these sites in the last four years, you might find this orientation guide to Facebook useful.

Google Moderator Gets White House Endorsement (by Joseph Tartakoff at Paid Content)
The White House has given its stamp of approval to Google Moderator, which it [used] to pick questions for President Barack Obama’s online town-hall meeting Thursday.

Meebo Comes to the Desktop (by Adam Ostrow at Mashable)
Web-based instant messaging service Meebo is coming to the desktop, by way of a downloadable notifier application. The Windows-only app sits in your taskbar, signs you into your various IM accounts, alerts you to new IMs, and optionally notifies you when friends sign online and off… For me – who has replaced a desktop IM client in favor of Meebo – the notifier makes a lot of sense, since it’s one less tab I need to keep open constantly. Which, makes me question the logic of this move on Meebo’s part from a business perspective, since it means I’ll likely be loading a few less of the full-page brand advertisements (see below) that the company seems to be placing inside of the Meebo Web experience.

New Report From Lauren Rich Fine: ‘What The Changing Mobile Industry Means For Media Executives’ (Paid Content)
In her latest report, ContentNext Research Director Lauren Rich Fine provides insights into the future of mobile, looking at patterns in M&A and VC-funding activity, and assessing the potential for mobile content, from games to music to social networks, to thrive. 

Crystal Cathedral: OMG! Poser tweets as Schuller
Televangelist Robert H. Schuller has reached millions worldwide with his weekly “Hour of Power” TV broadcasts, but when it comes to the Internet, he had a high-tech headache: an online impostor.

Your Online Clicks Have Value, for Someone Who Has Something to Sell
Two new Internet companies, BlueKai and eXelate Media, are tracking who is interested in what through a cookie.

Nielsen’s looks for high-tech option.
Nielsen is using a low-tech sticker diary for its just-launched small market ratings. That could change if or when Nielsen goes after big market business. But unlike Arbitron, it’s likely to seek a software-based system that could work on a wider range of devices than just a pager.

Electronic Arts Bringing Popular Sports Titles to iPhone (Mashable)
Can the experience of playing Madden on a big screen TV with surround sound be matched or at least emulated by handheld devices? That’s the bet Electronic Arts is making, as the company prepares to bring the classic video game football franchise and a host of other popular titles to the iPhone.

UK iPhone users lead way in Web, email use: survey
Over 90 percent of Apple Inc’s British iPhone users accessed mobile media in January including websites, e-mails, social networks and games, far higher than users of other mobile phones, research showed.

Patent infringement lawsuit may affect iPhone
Accolade Systems sued Micron Technology and its subsidiary Aptina Imaging for infringing on one of its patents, according to documents filed with the courts on Tuesday. While Apple isn’t named in the suit, components in the iPhone are part of the lawsuit.

Streaming games: Bane or boon for ISPs?
Parents might get a new