Permanent link to MTA daily media news

London Calling ( by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)

Jesus, Extraterrestrials, & Teh Awesomeness (by Damon at Corrente)
I thought we’d be getting away from this fuzziness when we were faced, head on, with the realness of our economic and social situation, the dire reality that success means not only getting the economy running, again, but reconstructing it to run correctly, this time. One of the biggest false meme floating around is that this society simply needs a reset. We don’t need a reset, we need a reconstruction.
A reconstruction like those suggested below, perhaps?

The G20′s Blind Spot: President Obama must squarely face the bad asset problem (by Keiichiro Kobayashi, thanks to Economist’s View)
So long as people hold onto the expectation that recovery could be brought about by fiscal measures, no national consensus can be built to proceed with the painful disposition of nonperforming assets. It is necessary to learn by firsthand experience that fiscal measures are only makeshift. In this context, the enormous fiscal deficit that will be built up in the US in the coming months may be the political cost for consensus building, which would be a replay of what Japan went through in the 1990s.

No More Refuge for Scoundrels (by Joe Conason)
While the leaders of the world’s largest economies debate stimulus and regulation in London, let us hope they do not forget about crime and punishment. Rooted in the most massive swindles in financial history, the global crisis offers an unprecedented opportunity to prosecute the criminals whose machinations steered us toward disaster — and to deter them in the future… Massive fraud has been at the center of this crisis from bottom to top, as everyone paying attention must know… Vast amounts of taxable wealth, last estimated to exceed $12 trillion, are hidden in the protected banks of tax-haven principalities, with annual losses to the U.S. Treasury that may well be greater than $100 billion… The urge to cheat on taxes and the desire to evade regulation represent the same destructive impulse, which governments around the world should now take steps to suppress.

Maybe we could force feed them some of this:
Drug Quells Urge to Steal (Live Science)
A drug given to kleptomaniacs took some of the fun out of stealing, a new study suggests. “It gets rid of that rush and desire,” said study team member Jon E. Grant of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine. “The difference in their behavior was significant, and these people were really troubled by their behavior.”

The Socialist Solution to the Crisis (by Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists and a former prime minister of Denmark, writing in the Wall Street Journal)
The job losses, repossessions, uncertainty, fear and misery faced by the people of Europe, the United States and Japan are a terrible stain on the consciences of those bankers and politicians whose doctrine of neo-liberal markets plunged us all into this crash… The simplistic dictum of more markets and less government — championed by Reagan, Thatcher and their ideological heirs — has failed on a momentous scale…

We must press harder than ever for the implementation of the eight Millennium Development Goals agreed to by the United Nations in 2000, which include halving extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS. A global crackdown on tax havens and tax avoidance could provide the funds to take the fight against such scourges as infectious diseases, maternal mortality and poverty to a whole new level. We could base our stimulus spending on smart green growth, making real progress in protecting the environment. Would that not be an inspiring way to combat the recession? We must press for the strongest possible international agreement on climate change… We must also renew our faith in diplomacy as a means to achieve peace.
Gee, it makes so much sense.  What could be standing in the way?

What’s Wrong With Washington? (by James Wolcott at Vanity Fair)
Washington has always been out of sync with the rest of America, but since Obama’s election, Beltway pundits seem more stubbornly and stupendously irrelevant than ever. Have three decades of being wired for Republican power blown their jittery, Twittering minds?

Graphing how we got here… (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)

Oh, well, but the Democrats are better, right?
Sansculottes, or brownshirts? (by Michael J. Smith at Stop Me Before I Vote Again)
[A commenter] concedes, in effect, that the Democratic Party’s function is to block the General Will. But he concludes that that’s a Good Thing, since the General Will is… Hitler!… Fear of the mob has a long history. The precise form it takes depends on where you’re coming from. The rich generally worry about Bolshevism and expropriation… [They] don’t want their money taken away. That’s understandable enough.

The nightmare of the meritoids [the “merit” class*] has a different basis. Their amour-propre depends on the sense of being better, not just richer… [T]hey’re more conscientious, more enlightened, kinder, less prejudiced, more rational and critical, and of course better-informed than the mob. So … the mob must be the opposite: bigoted, chauvinistic, irrational, ignorant, uncritical, and in short, the inevitable prey of a Hitler redivivus, unless they’re kept in line. Enter the Democratic Party, which we can depend on to keep ‘em in line, and throw ‘em a crumb every now and then to gratify our tender enlightened merit-class hearts. Win/win!
*Most of whom get more help with advancement based on who they know and where they went to school, and how well they suck up to the powerful, rather than on true merit.

Time to change some of the beliefs drilled into Americans by a 40 plus year campaign by a few rich, right wing families:
The End of Universal Rationality (by Yochai Benkler at The Edge, thanks to Economist’s View)
How [do] we build actual, tractable analysis that allows us to convert what in some sense we all know, that some of us are selfish and some of us aren’t. That actually most of us are more selfish some of the time and less selfish other of the time and in different relations. That we don’t all align according to the standard economic model of selfish rationality, but that we’re also not saints. Mother Teresa wouldn’t be Mother Teresa if everybody were like her. So this is the puzzle that I’m really trying to chew on now, which is how we move from knowing this intuitively and having a folk wisdom about it to something that probably won’t in any immediate future have the tractability and precision of mainstream economics.
My comment:

It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. From the book I’d finish, if I could ever find a publisher:

[E]volution favors the survival of a species over the survival of any of its individuals. And because living in groups has played such a large part in our success as a species, one might think we would have a mechanism to motivate us toward helping the group survive, as a counter to our natural selfishness.

Now we know that there is such a mechanism…

A group of researchers based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, found that when a woman is involved in a situation where she is cooperating with someone else, she experiences activation in brain areas that are also activated by “rewards” such as food, money and drugs…

When our species lived only in hunter/gatherer tribes, banishment from the tribe was the equivalent of a death sentence. Therefore, individuals who survived to pass on their genes apparently were those who developed the ability to find pleasure in getting along in the group. Even in our most distant history, then, individual freedom must have been constrained by this conflicting need…

People who live in tribes do not have a “greed is good” mentality. In a tribal environment selfishness is discouraged, while generosity is admired and rewarded. One did not become a chief simply by being the strongest. An aspirant for chiefdom had to build coalitions of supporters, be willing to listen to the wisdom of the elders, and respect the natural world. He was most likely to become and remain chief if he was known as a brave hunter and warrior, but also as a fair and generous person.

Living in groups actually predates our species, if we can assume that the common ancestors of humans, apes, and monkeys lived in the same kinds of troops our simian relatives live in to this day. Evolutionary biologists are finding that social skills, including altruism, honor, and even a sense of fairness and justice are tendencies found in the apes, our closest relatives. (See Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Frans de Waal.) Perhaps we can also assume, then, that these are traits we and the apes have inherited from a common ancestor.

If these scientists are correct, we humans are born with a built-in conflict. As even the earliest philosophers understood, we are torn between our self-interest and our desire to help others…

There is a Native American story about a grandfather, talking to his young grandson. He tells the boy that he has two wolves inside him that are struggling with each other. One is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other is the wolf of fear, greed and hatred. “Which wolf will win grandfather?” asks the boy. “Whichever one I feed” came the reply.

We have been feeding the vengeful, angry wolf in America for much too long. It is well past time to start feeding the loving, compassionate wolf.

Thursday: This is what happens when you don’t have principles (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)
Nicolas (pronounced nee-ko-la) Sarkozy may be a petulant prima donna but he’s right about one thing.  The world cannot get on its feet economically if we continue to deal with the finance industry in a piecemeal fashion without regulatory fixes.  If there continues to be separate deals for each problem and no international or domestic law to hold the financials accountable, there can be no trust or faith in the system.  If there is no trust, there is no confidence that once leant, your money will come back to you.  People understand risk.  What they don’t understand is how their governments can allow them to be fleeced.  Confidence needs to be restored to the system to make sure the money flows to where it is needed.  That can’t happen until the big countries involved agree to set standards for financial transactions and regulations.  We are global now.

But this is not something that is in Obama’s blood.  Obama is of the “everything is on the table” variety of president.  Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever had a president who has ever put his principles on such a sliding scale as this one.  George W. Bush was a stickler for details compared to Obama.  And Bill Clinton, that master of triangulation, at least had the perfectly rational excuse that he was faced with an overtly hostile Congress and national press.  But what is Obama’s excuse for throwing away the tenets and principles of the party he comandeered to shmooze his way to the top?  He has every advantage a president could want and still he sides with the bad guys.

Obama says other countries need to ‘pick up the pace’ (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama heads into a global economic summit on Thursday warning that the world can no longer depend on the U.S. to be the consumer-driven engine of economic growth and that other nations will have to step up and do more.

G-20 gives $1 trillion to fight global crisis (AP)
World leaders pledged $1.1 trillion in loans and guarantees to struggling countries and agreed Thursday to crack down on tax havens and hedge funds — but failed to reach sweeping accord on more stimulus spending to attack the global economic decline.

Dow jumps above 8,000 for first time in 2 months (AP)
 Investors dove into stocks on Thursday, sending theDow Jones industrials above the 8,000 mark for the first time in nearly two months. Market indicators surged more than 4 percent in late afternoon trading following an accounting rule change that could strengthen banks’ balance sheets and fresh efforts by world leaders to fight the financial crisis.

World leaders agree on executive compensation (AP)
President Barack Obama says world leaders agree on principles that will bring accountability and transparency to executive compensation at corporations around the world. Obama says company shareholders should vote on executive compensation, even if the vote is not binding. He said some sort of “shame function” may be in order as well.

Rule change intended to ease bank crisis could make it worse (by Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy)
The little-known Financial Accounting Standards Board is poised to deliver Thursday a change in accounting rules that proponents say will save the banking system — and opponents warn could bring even more ruin to the U.S. economy. The FASB board is expected to relax the rules on how banks value assets that investors no longer are willing to purchase. Current rules require banks to list the value of assets on their books at their current market price — a practice called “mark-to-market.” The assets, however, at the center of the global financial meltdown — securities backed by bad mortgages — have no market. Investors simply won’t touch them.

That’s forced banks to lower the reported value of their assets, and quarter after quarter since mid-2007, they’ve had to write off more and more losses. That forces them to hoard their capital, rather than lend it, to offset their losses. That’s how the housing crisis begat the banking crisis, which begat the U.S. economic crisis, which begat the global financial meltdown.
Don’t forget that the relaxation of asset value reporting rules was one of the factors that led to the savings and loan crisis (click through and read the last paragraph in this section—also, read Den of Thieves by James Stewart).  How can it be a good thing to allow any business to value its assets at any amount it wants to?  Haven’t we learned from ALL of these crises, one every eight to ten years, during the last 30, that we can’t trust the people doing the valuing?

Keep Marking to Market (by David Min, Center for American Progress)
Mark-to-market rules, the story goes, force financial institutions to record excessively low values for their troubled assets such as mortgage-backed securities–values that are supposedly not reflective of inherent economic value but instead based on prices resulting from illiquid and panicked markets. Marking to market supposedly drives banks’ balance sheets into peril by causing the recognition of artificial losses, which then force them to raise more capital, a difficult task in the current market… On the other side of this argument are the defenders of fair-value accounting, composed primarily of the investor community, the accounting profession, and most regulators, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, FDIC Chairman Bair, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro. Their argument is basically two pronged.

First, they argue that the consequences of fair-value accounting are greatly misunderstood and vastly overstated. Second, they note that fair-value accounting is necessary insofar as it promotes transparency–suspending fair-value accounting would create opacity and uncertainty as to the veracity of bank balance sheets, thus deteriorating investor confidence and prolonging and intensifying the credit freeze. But their defense of fair-value accounting begs the question: What are these assets actually worth?

A stimulus plan for your paycheck (McClatchy)
Your paychecks are about to get fatter, and that’s no April Fool’s Day joke. The income tax cuts included in the economic stimulus plan passed by Congress in February kick in today.

One More Try on Those Bonuses (by Alegre)
Looks like the House is giving it another try in going after those excessive Wall Street bonuses… “The bill … passed by a vote of 247-171, and seeks to ban bonuses that the Treasury secretary deems ‘unreasonable and excessive.’ The bill is a milder effort to respond to the public backlash over executive pay at firms receiving taxpayer-funded bailouts than a measure approved last month. Eight Democrats broke ranks and opposed the bill, while 10 Republicans voted in favor.” So, do you think BHO will sign off on this one?  Of course, there wouldn’t be any need for this second go-round if he’d gone after the hot-shots on Wall Street with half the energy as he has Main Street.

Afghan-Pakistan situation dire; more troops may be needed (McClatchy)
The situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is “increasingly dire,” top defense officials told Congress Wednesday, and they said that President Barack Obama may have to send another 10,000 troops beyond the 21,500 he’s announced since taking office.

Rep. Ellison: ‘I Am Skeptical Of The Troop Escalation In Afghanistan’ (Think Progress)
Roll Call reports today that “anti-war Democrats have been largely mum on President Barack Obama’s recently unveiled policy for Afghanistan — partly because leading liberals don’t yet know where they stand.” But Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim member of Congress, is clear about his position on the issue. [Tuesday], Thinkprogress interviewed Ellison and asked where he stands on President Obama’s plan to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Afghans have “seen a lot of foreign powers come to their country — whether it’s the Soviets, the Brits, and now the Americans — and I think they want to see their country finally have peace,” Ellison replied. Ellison told ThinkProgress that he is “skeptical” of the troop increase.

Karzai Urged to Scrap Afghan Women’s Law (by Alegre)
In Afghanistan, if you’re married you’ll have to rely on him for “permission” when it comes to working outside the home, getting an education, or even visiting a doctor.  And refusing sex when he wants it…?  Fuggedaboudit!  Rape is now legal between a husband and wife and if you’re married in Afghanistan today you have zero rights.   Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, signed a law that would legalize all of this about a month ago.   He’s getting an earful at the conference in the Netherlands over it now… Reports like this make my blood boil, but they also make me grateful that we have someone like Hillary on the front lines in this fight.  If anyone can get through to those who would enslave women, it’s her.
If they let her.  Yesterday I received an email from Obama’s political action group, Change.org, asking me to tell Congress to act on making aid to Afghanistan more efficient, but there was no word about this action against women.

New Israeli foreign minister disavows U.S.-led peace talks (McClatchy)
As foreign diplomats and his predecessor looked on in astonishment, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman began his new job Wednesday by declaring the death of U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Conservative Assault On Another Top Obama Nominee May Be Fizzling (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Okay, this is interesting: It looks like an assault being waged from the right on another key Obama nominee may be flaming out, mainly because the White House and the media are avoiding the mistakes of the Chas Freeman saga. As you recall, Freeman took himself out of contention for a key administration job after a similar conservative attack. The latest assault — courtesy of Glenn Beck, Fox, and others — concerns Harold Koh, the incoming legal adviser to the state department, who shapes the administration’s legal policies and has the power to reverse controversial Bush ones. The battle has unfolded largely under the traditional media radar, reminding many of the war over Freeman, which got no big media attention.

Koh’s scathing criticism of the Bush administration’s regard for the rule of law has made him a prime target for the right… A taste: Conservatives clalim that Koh supposedly said that Sharia law should apply in U.S. courts — but that has been debunked. So is Koh headed for Freeman’s fate? Doesn’t look like it. For one thing, the White House has mounted an aggressive defense of Koh and his qualifications. In Freeman’s case, the White House wouldn’t say word boo in his defense.

NY-20 Updates (by Alegre)
Looks like Scott Murphy’s lead has been narrowed to just 25 votes.  But as First Read reports, absentee and military ballots have to be postmarked by election day, but will take a while to trickle in.  As many as 10,000 absentee ballots have been requested by the voters in NY-20, and they won’t really know the final count on those until April 7th.  Military ballots have to be received by April 13th. So it looks like we won’t know anything definitive for a couple weeks. 

Murphy “Carpet Bombed” Local Internet Users (Political Wire)
Yesterday’s special election “prompted the use of a rarely-employed online ad tactic some liken to carpet bombing,” according to Tech President. ”From late Sunday night through noon yesterday,” Scott Murphy (D) “blanketed Web pages viewed by residents of the district… The goal is akin more to a classic television campaign than a typical online political ad effort. In short, the Google blasters aim to persuade voters just before an election by getting their ad messages in front of them multiple times within a short time frame.”

Big Decision Ahead for Pawlenty (Political Wire)
“The legal fight between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is headed to the desk of Gov. Tim Pawlenty — a no-win predicament for a Minnesota Republican with his eye on a White House run in 2012,” Politico reports. If Franken’s ahead after counting the final 400 absentee ballots, Pawlenty “will have a choice: sign the election certificate that will allow Democrats to seat Franken in the Senate or play to the Republicans whose support he’d need in 2012 by withholding the certificate while Coleman challenges the election in the federal court system.”

Complicating Pawlenty’s task is the Minneapolis Star Tribune observation that few “see any chance of Coleman throwing in the towel.” He’s promise to run his appeal through the federal courts.

Dodd Falls Way Behind in New Poll (Political Wire)
A new Quinnipiac poll shows Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) now trailing former Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT), 50% to 34%, in the 2010 Senate race. In two other match ups, Dodd trails both Sam Caligiuri (R), 41% to 37%, and loses to Tom Foley (R), 43% to 35%. Key finding: Voters disapprove 58% to 33% of the job the Democratic incumbent is doing, his lowest approval rating ever. Said pollster Douglas Schwartz: “A 33% job approval is unheard of for a 30-year incumbent, especially a Democrat in a blue state… Dodd’s numbers among Democrats are especially devastating.”

Will Stevens dismissal undercut Alaska’s corruption probe? (McClatchy)
The government’s sudden move Wednesday to drop its case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens set questions swirling about whether the taint over the Stevens case threatens any of the other convictions in Alaska’s broad public corruption saga.

With charges dropped against Stevens, Alaska GOP now calling on Begich to resign. (Think Progress)
Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he was asking a judge to drop all charges against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct by Justice Department lawyers. In response, the Alaska Republican party today sent out a press release hailing the announcement and calling for the resignation of Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), who defeated Stevens this past November:

Gregg Definitely Not Running (Political Wire)
Despite pressure from Senate Republicans to change his mind, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) “has closed the door on seeking reelection next year,” The Hill reports. The NRSC has struggled to recruit a candidate to run for Gregg’s seat. The leading contender to win the Democratic primary next year is Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH).

Declaration of War?? (by Alegre)
Mike Enzi (R-WY) went a wee bit over the top during a Senate hearing today, when he compared the possible use of the reconciliation process to get health care reform through the Senate to a declaration of war. Republicans are so used to threatening a filibuster, they’re confusing a simple majority of 100 with the magic number 60.  At least Sebelius hasn’t sold us out on this one, and is saying everything’s still on the table as far as the WH is concerned… “If the question is, ‘Do I support a public option side-by-side with private insurers in a health-insurance exchange?’ yes, I do,” Sebelius said.
But hasn’t war already been declared?  See below.

Filibusters skyrocket under Republican minority in 110th Congress. (Think Progress)
Yesterday, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) slammed the idea of passing health care reform and other Obama priorities through a simple majority of the Senate, a process called reconciliation. “Now, if they do that, that, in effect is the nuclear war,” Kyl said. The Republicans have become experts at using Senate filibusters — or often just the threat of filibusters — to block the Democratic agenda while in the minority. As this chart from Norm Ornstein shows, the use of filibusters have skyrocketed under Republicans:

Happy Hour Roundup: McCain Will Offer His Own Budget (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
* Yes, John McCain will be offering an alternative budget, as has been rumored. His spokesperson, Brooke Buchanan, confirms to me that he’ll be offering that alternative on the Senate floor this evening… Details on McCain’s budget proposal here.
* But McCain’s budget isn’t being done with the support of Senate GOP leaders.

GOP Bashes Obama Budget With 8-Month-Old Data (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
As part of the alternative budget rollout on Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan published in a Wall Street Journal op-ed a chart plotting out the spending projections between the “Democratic Budgets” and “Republican Alternative.” The ominous graph gives the perception of government spending run amok, with the blue Democratic line rising precipitously over the course of the next 60 years; the red Republican line stays stable and even falls. There is only one problem: the numbers were projected some six months before Obama took office; eight months before he introduced a budget.

At Least 11 Republicans In Congress Advance False Claim That Green Economy Bill Imposes $3,100 Tax On Families (Think Progress)
Yesterday, the Wonk Room’s Ben Furnas noted that House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have been attacking a cap-and-trade proposal before Congress, falsely claiming that the measure would cost American families over $3,000 per year in extra taxes. They base their claim on a 2007 MIT study. However, after interviewing one of the study’s researchers, MIT professor John Reilly, PolitiFact reported on Monday that the GOP claim is false, giving it a “pants on fire” rating on the website’s “Truth-O-Meter.” According to Reilly, the report actually finds that any tax burden resulting from the bill’s enactment wouldn’t be felt until 2015 — at $31 per person and $79 per family per year, not $3,100.

Regardless of the facts, at least nine other Republican members of Congress have made this false claim since PolitiFact’s report. However, some haven’t exactly nailed down the talking point. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said the tax would be levied on “every living American,” not tax-paying families, while Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) upped the tax to $4,560 per family.
Click through to watch a video compilation of the claims.

In midst of recession, Sens. Kyl and Lincoln think ‘the most pressing issue’ is ‘America’s wealthiest families.’ (Think Progress)
Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) have offered a $250 billion proposal to cut estate taxes for the children of multi-millionaires. The proposal is attracting a disturbing amount of support. In an editorial this morning, The New York Times writes that, while the nation is focused on ending the deep recession, Kyl and Lincoln’s “most pressing issue is clear: America’s wealthiest families need help.

Although she is ‘focused on Alaska,’ Palin still agrees to attend a Right to Life fundraiser in Indiana. (Think Progress)
Earlier this month, the top congressional GOP fundraising committees issued a press release announcing that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) would deliver the keynote address at their annual fundraising dinner. The groups eventually had to backtrack when Palin’s staff claimed that the governor had never made such a commitment because she was too busy with Alaska state business. However, First Read now reports that Palin is still planning to attend a Right to Life fundraiser in Indiana on April 16.

Alaska legislators reject Palin’s pick for state Senate (McClatchy)
Senate Democrats this afternoon rejected Gov. Sarah Palin’s appointment of Tim Grussendorf to the state Senate.

Jindal Doubles Down On Neo-Hooverism, Will Reject Low-Income Health Coverage In Stimulus Package (Think Progress)
Last month, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) — rumored to be mulling a 2012 presidential bid — rejected $90 million in federal stimulus dollars that would have expanded the state’s unemployment insurance compensation program. [Tuesday], Jindal announced his next assault on the poor: rejecting the stimulus’s health care funding. Jindal, widely recognized for his health policy acumen, “plans to reject some federal health-care dollars for the poor and uninsured.” Louisiana’s Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine “said accepting the new federal financing would require the state to put up matching money that it doesn’t have”.

Rod Blagojevich Could Be Indicted Thursday (CBS 2 Chicago)
Former governor Rod Blagojevich could be indicted on corruption charges Thursday. And CBS 2′s Derrick Blakley reports he may not be the only Blagojevich standing before a judge. The clock is ticking and federal prosecutors have to drop a criminal indictment on Rod Blagojevich by next Tuesday at the very latest.  But there’s still plenty of speculation about how many of his family members will face charges as well.

Why Aren’t “Free Traders” Bothered by Protectionism for Banks? (by Dean Baker)
USA Today had a piece about the growing threat of protectionism. It then listed a series of measures in the various G-20 countries that it viewed as protectionist. For some reason, it excluded from its list the trillions of dollars in below market rate loans that the United States is giving to its financial system. It did not even include the “buy America” provision in the Geithner plan that requires that the financial firms managing investment funds in the plan be headquartered in the United States.

Do Economic Reporters Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows? (by Dean Baker)
CNN is joining the chorus of those seeing an uptick in weather distorted data. They pointed to upticks in housing starts, and new and existing home sales in February as evidence the economy is turning around. We all want to see the economy turn around, but the weather is not going to doing it for us… The basic story is that January was a very bad month in part because of worse than usual weather. February looks good both because the weather was not bad relative to what is normal for the month and also because activity that was delayed because of weather in January instead took place in February.

This false optimism will likely be wiped out by the March jobs report that will be released on Friday. Reporters should try to find experts that know about the weather.

Economic Crisis: Where Can President Find an Adviser Who Gives Good Television? (by Felix Gilette, New York Observer)
Not long ago, President Barack Obama finally got around to filling three of the top jobs at th Treasury Department that had been vacant since his inauguration. But even afterward, one top financial job was left conspicuously unfilled—namely, the role of Economic Surrogate in Chief. A good economic statesman—somebody who can crunch budget projections by day and give good TV by night—can be hard to find. It’s a lesson that’s been driven home in Washington in recent months: when the secretary of the Treasury steps in front of the cameras, he’s getting the White House on  Saturday Night Live, and not in a good way.

Brooks: My colleagues’ pro-Obama bias is unconscious
“I think the press is pro-Obama,” NYT columnist David Brooks said at a Texas Christian University panel discussion. “Most of my colleagues are extremely committed to the craft of journalism. So I think most of the bias is unconscious — in framing the issues and what gets paid attention to.”

Stephen Colbert Rips Glenn Beck: Building His Career On 9/11
“The 9-12 project is not for families directly affected by 9/11, just people building their careers on it,” Colbert said.

CNN Atlanta Chief To Temporarily Oversee 8pm Hour
Roland Martin began guest hosting at 8pmET on Monday, while Campbell Brown takes maternity leave. Martin said on the air it would be for eight weeks. As a tipster noted yesterday, there appears to be some temporary changes behind the scenes as well.

Krugman Wants Anyone Making More Than 75K In Jail: Morning Joe Panelists (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
What, exactly, is it about Paul Krugman that gets the blood boiling for so many pundits? The Nobel Prize winning economist was the object of derision on Thursday morning, with panelists of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” wondering aloud if he was a crazed anti-capitalist demanding that anyone making a profit be thrown behind bars.

Morning Joe Rips Into Glenn Beck
Tina Brown: “Somebody Get This Blubbering Buffoon A Kleenex!”

Ed Schultz to Host MSNBC’s 6pmET Hour (TVNewser)
Ed Schultz will take over MSNBC’s 6pmET slot currently hosted by David Shuster. The announcement was made by Keith Olbermann at the end of his show with Schultz as his guest. Olbermann said “the new news hour” called The Ed Show would premiere Monday.
Great.  Another blowhard for Obama.  Who “used to be” a conservative.

“I gotta do this”: Matthews gushes over Michelle Obama-Carla Bruni “summit,” asks whether they’ll be “dressed to beat the other” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Krauthammer: “It’s a little early to declare a presidency failed-although I would like to do it” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Rove Says Obama is Playing Politics (Political Wire)
After reading President Obama’s comment in a closed door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week — “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.” – Karl Rove sounds the alarms in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, noting the president “is steeped in the ways of Chicago politics and has not forgotten his training in the methods once used by Saul Alinsky, the radical Chicago community organizer.” Imagine that, a president practicing politics.

O’Reilly suggests having “undercover press people from America” “infiltrate” anarchist London protestors, adds “most of them would fit in right away” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

O’Reilly Marks 100 Months at No. 1
Bill O’Reilly is marking an anniversary this week. Mr. O’Reilly’s program on the Fox News Channel, “The O’Reilly Factor,” in March reached a milestone of 100 consecutive months as the most popular program on cable news. To celebrate, he granted a round of interviews and appeared on “The View,” “Good Morning America” and other programs.

Proctor & Gamble responds to O’Reilly campaign: ‘Comments like yours help us determine’ ad placement. (Think Progress)
In response to our Stop Supporting The O’Reilly Harassment Machine campaign, Proctor & Gamble issued this statement to ThinkProgress…: “Comments like yours help us determine our future ad placement, and I’m sharing your comments with the appropriate people in the company…” This response indicates why our campaign is important. At the very least, we are informing O’Reilly’s sponsors about his behavior and forcing them to assess whether they want to continue to support him. Please join our campaign.

Glenn Beck: I was wrong. We’re not marching to socialism, we’re marching toward fascism. (Think Progress)
For almost a year, Glenn Beck has been warning with increasing panic that America is headed toward socialism. [Wednesday night], he issued a correction: “They” are not marching the United States toward socialism, Beck explained, but actually fascism… Though Beck claimed he didn’t mean “Adolf Hitler kind of fascism” and that he was talking about “fascism with a happy face,” he illustrated his point with more than a minute’s worth of Nazi footage, played dramatically on the full screen behind him. [Emphasis added.]
Click through to watch the video.

Beck claims “we’ve been on this road” to “fascism” “since Teddy Roosevelt” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Beck being “really rude” about Uighurs held at Gitmo: “I think this makes a good case to shoot people on the battlefield” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Glenn Beck’s Is Only Cable News Web Site To Crack Top Ten Last Week
According to HitWise, the Glenn Beck page on FoxNews.com was the most visited cable news network show online last week. Beck drew a 1.48% share, finishing 9th overall. When children’s shows are excluded Beck is 7th and The O’Reilly Factor page is 9th. Among the broadcast networks, ABC.com was #1 again last week and Fox’s “American Idol” had the #1 ranked TV show Website among the broadcast networks.

Limbaugh: If Gordon Brown keeps “slobbering” over Obama, he’ll “come down with anal poisoning and may die from it” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limabugh: Obama “is about people being unsatisfied and frightened of the future so that they will turn to him” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

KSFO’s Sussman: “Islamic finance is about living within your means and helping the needy, unless they’re Jews“ (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

The anger is getting to everyone.
BREAKING NEWS: Hundreds of Iowans thrown out of public hearing (DesMoines Register, thanks to GRL at InsightAnalytical)
More than 500 people who are upset with a plan to change Iowa’s tax laws were cleared from a hearing tonight at the Iowa House after they interrupted multiple times. House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, cleared the crowd at about 8:30 p.m. The decision brought about loud protests as the crowd was escorted from the chambers by Iowa State Patrol officers. “This is the most atrocious thing I’ve seen in the history of the 15 years I’ve been a lobbyist. Pat Murphy has acted like a jack-booted Nazi,” said Ed Failor Jr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief, a conservative taxpayers’ rights group from Muscatine with 50,000 members. [Emphasis added.]

Commentary: Time to start talking about legalizing drugs (by Leonard Pitts Jr., a conservative editor, Miami Herald, a conservative newspaper)
Maybe we should legalize drugs. I come neither eagerly nor easily to that maybe. Rather, I come by way of spiraling drug violence in Mexico that recently forced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to acknowledge the role America’s insatiable appetite for narcotics plays in the carnage. I come by way of watching Olympian Michael Phelps do the usual public relations song and dance after being outed smoking weed, and knowing the whole thing was a ritualized farce. Most of all, I come by way of personal antipathy: I don’t like and have never used illegal drugs. But yeah, I’m thinking maybe we should legalize them.

Marijuana ingredient may reduce tumors: study (Reuters)
The active ingredient in marijuana appears to reduce tumor growth, according to a Spanish study published on Wednesday. The researchers showed giving THC to mice with cancer decreased tumor growth and killed cells off in a process called autophagy.
In America, though, you’ll just have to die because you might get high from your medicine, and we simply cannot have that.

American Airlines union goes viral against execs
Unions at American Airlines have picketed, worn buttons and rented billboards to protest what they consider unseemly management bonuses. Now they’re using an interactive Web site game to skewer their CEO. The Transport Workers Union, which represents mechanics, bag handlers and other ground workers at American, said Thursday it is launching a new campaign to protest stock-based compensation for several hundred management employees later this month.

Honest Man Emerges From Muck of Banking Crisis (by Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg, thanks to Lambert at Corrente)
Remember this man’s name: Charles Bowsher. He’s one of the few people leaving the banking crisis behind with his reputation enhanced. Bowsher, who was comptroller general of the U.S. from 1981 to 1996, had a simple reason for resigning last week as chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank System’s Office of Finance. He didn’t want to put his name on the banks’ combined financial statements, because he was uncomfortable vouching for them. Bowsher, 77, had held the post since April 2007. With so many top executives complaining they can’t figure out what their companies’ assets are worth, the real wonder is that more corporate directors haven’t quit rather than certify financial reports they don’t understand.

Health Critic Brings a Past and a Wallet (New York Times)
Richard L. Scott is unusual in these tough economic times: a rich, conservative investor willing to spend freely on a political cause. Mr. Scott is starring in his own rotation of advertisements against the broad outlines of President Obama’s health care plans. (“Imagine waking up one day and all your medical decisions are made by a central, national board,” he warns in a radio spot.) He has dispatched camera crews to other countries to document the perils of socialized medicine. He visited with lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week, and his new group, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, has hired a leading conservative public relations firm, CRC, well known for its work with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, during his presidential campaign…

Once lauded for building Columbia/HCA into the largest health care company in the world, Mr. Scott was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 amid the nation’s biggest health care fraud scandal. The company’s guilty plea and payment of $1.7 billion to settle charges including the overbilling of state and federal health programs was taken as a repudiation of Mr. Scott’s relentless bottom-line approach… Liberal groups planning to defend the administration’s health care plan, whatever form it takes, are seizing on Mr. Scott’s background through Web videos, fact sheets, blog postings and unflattering additions to his Wikipedia entry, which until recently did not mention his ouster from Columbia.

Resource: OpenSecrets.Org Now Tallies the Bills (Capital Eye)
When unions, corporations and other groups spend big bucks to hire lobbyists, it appears they’re most often doing so with the goal of reaping even bigger bucks in return. The largest number of lobbying filers reported targeting appropriations bills during the last Congress, the Center for Responsive Politics has found. OpenSecrets.org now tracks the number of filers that reported lobbying on a particular piece of legislation, back to 2005, providing information about the specific clients that paid for the work and the lawmakers sponsoring the bills. Also, each client and lobbying firm profile now includes a tab displaying the bills they were working on. You can now search OpenSecrets.org’s Lobbying Database by a bill’s name, description or number. 

Resource: With LegiStorm, Jock Friedly Provides Access to Capitol Hill Salaries (Washington Post)
Go ahead. Hate him. Jock Friedly couldn’t care less. This is a man who counts being burned in effigy among his career highlights. So he’s hardly going to be bothered by all these congressional staffers who think he’s pretty much the Devil incarnate.

Media Matters for America headlines

• Misstating Rove column, Kilmeade baselessly claimed 66 percent oppose “the stimulus bill”

• Media fail to challenge Republicans on past acts of massive debt creation

• Hannity criticized Obama press kit for containing phrases that Bush State Dept. used

• Without basis, The Fox Nation wonders: “Is Obama Targeting Catholics?”

• Angle, Kudlow allow Ryan to advance falsehood about stimulus spending timeframe

• Frisch: “Socialized” medicine: Next front in the right’s “-isms” arms race

• April Fools: Ann Coulter falls for fake Obama NASCAR story

• George Will continues to misuse WMO climate data despite criticism from WMO sec. general

• Myths and falsehoods relating to President Obama’s budget proposal

• Politico cited criticism of Obama’s iPod gift by “etiquette expert,” but WH says queen requested it

• Post allowed “moderate” Specter to criticize reconciliation without noting his support for using it to pass Bush tax cuts

Cuba accuses blogger Yoani Sanchez of “provocation” (Reuters)
Cuban authorities accused blogger Yoani Sanchez on Wednesday of staging a “provocation against the Cuban Revolution” after she and others spoke publicly about censorship during an arts performance in Havana.

China orders tighter controls on online videos
China issued new rules on Thursday aiming to crack down on “harmful” political or religious online videos, two weeks after footage of police allegedly beating Tibetan monks circulated on the Web.

YouTube blocks music videos on German site
German music fans hoping to catch their idols’ latest hits on video-sharing website YouTube are set for disappointment since the site has blocked premium music videos over a licensing dispute.

Lawyer: “We’ve gotten away from the concept that the truth matters”
Attorney Lynda Goldman says the public underestimates how celebs struggle to repair reputations diminished in an instant on the Internet. James Rainey says of her complaint: “It’s not that the truth doesn’t matter but that our system correctly values free-wheeling expression. That freedom comes with imperfections that we don’t accept but should understand.” || Edward Wasserman: Should a celeb who is falsely reported to have same-sex lovers still be able to sue for libel?
The truth no longer matters, and it’s not just in libel cases.

Creating Google Earth Street Views to Advance News Stories (by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online)
Blogger Frank Taylor recently wrote about homemade street views, a cool Google Earth trick that could be an intriguing online news tool. The example Taylor used is from Taiwan, where “Google Earth fanatic” Steven Ho lives. Taylor wrote: “[Ho] has been waiting for signs Google would bring Street View to Taiwan, but finally couldn’t wait any longer. So, he spent a few days making his own street view panoramas for National Taiwan University’s campus.” This made me think: What if a news organization offered this kind of experience and related it to a news story or ongoing topic?

California legislator seeks to limit photos on Google Maps
California has a new idea for thwarting terrorism: Attackers might not hit what they can’t see.

Ex-CEO of BetOnSports pleads guilty
The former chief executive of BetOnSports pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal racketeering conspiracy, admitting that the Internet company falsely portrayed Web-based gambling as legal and caused customers to lose millions of dollars they’ll likely never get back.

Newspaper adviser quits over policy change prompted by “hooking up” issue
School officials at a Lincolnshire, Ill. high school didn’t like the student paper’s “hooking up” issue, and now they’re reviewing the paper before it goes to press. “The staff as a whole has been a bit more timid, there’s a little more trepidation,” says a 16-year-old copy editor. Adviser Barbara Thill is resigning her post because of the pre-publication review policy.

College J-Student Wants to Work In….Print (by Hayley Peterson, Editor & Publisher)
Many of us rookie reporters are having trouble adjusting to the Internet and online journalism, having only recently fallen in love – deeply, in love – with traditional print journalism.

Check out the winners of the 2008 Peabody Awards
They include CNN for its election coverage, “This American Life” for its “Giant Pool of Money” report, the New York Times for its website, and The Onion for its TV news reports.

“There are only two ways to stop the newspaper death spiral”
Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts write:
* Newspapers have to concentrate all of their force and fire power on their own communities, making themselves indispensable to local residents.
* Or, a business like Google or Yahoo can begin to pay reporters in communities to produce content — to cover city councils and school boards, write about local development and utilities, local sports and arts, etc.

SPECIAL REPORT — Prophet Motives: What Can Be Done?
As more conclude the newspaper business model is broken, new and untested ownership ideas proliferate. Among them: L3C low-profit ownership, endowment plans, antitrust exemption, state aid and … just letting the marketplace rule.

Newspapers aren’t assets to be flipped, leveraged, and stripped
The businessmen who thought they were are now hanging out in bankruptcy court. Daniel Gross writes: “The newspaper companies that have failed wholesale were essentially set up to fail by inexperienced managers who believed piling huge amounts of debt on businesses whose revenues were shrinking even when the economy was growing was a shrewd means of value creation.”

Ben Bradlee: Fewer Newspapers May Not Be ‘Such A Bad Thing’
At Michael’s yesterday, legendary newspaperman Ben Bradlee wasn’t about to buy into all the gloom and doom about the industry: “When I was editor of the Post, there was something like 7,500 papers and now there’s 1,200. But I don’t think it’s such a bad thing if there’s a few less papers — if they’re better.”

Winds of Change in Chicago News (by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post)
By the big, brawny, tough-guy standards of Chicago journalism, Geoff Dougherty’s modest Web site might seem little more than a blip. With four reporters, four freelancers and 100 unpaid contributors, the Chitown Daily News is pioneering a new form of low-cost, street-level reporting, the need for which was dramatically driven home yesterday. The Chicago Sun-Times, a scrappy tabloid with a checkered history, filed for bankruptcy protection, joining the city’s other major daily, the Chicago Tribune, in Chapter 11 status. It was an extraordinary development for the city whose newspaper wars were immortalized in the 1920s play “The Front Page.”

Americans don’t want print bailout.
Newspaper circulations are plummeting and a new survey finds there’s little public support to save dailies. Just 37% favor federal government subsidies to keep newspapers in business according to a national Rasmussen telephone survey. More than four in ten say it’s better to let the papers go out of business.

NYT editor blasts VF writer’s “attempt at an original thesis”
Bill Keller writes to Vanity Fair after reading Mark Bowden’s piece on Arthur Sulzberger Jr.: “In a world of declining everything, our circulation revenue has gone up. That’s people paying good money for good journalism. And it buys us time to answer the existential question of our business, which is how we assure that journalism continues to pay. I’ll bet on Arthur Sulzberger finding the answer to that question before Mark Bowden does.”

Bankrupt ‘Sun-Times’ Parent Says Losses Doubled in ’08
Just a day after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Sun-Times Media Group on Wednesday disclosed that its operating loss more than doubled in 2008 to $309.4 million, while revenue skidded 13%.

Roeper: I hope to be writing for the Sun-Times 20 years down the road
When Richard Roeper became a full-time Sun-Times columnist in 1989, “the Tribune was a mighty monolith, the Sun-Times was scrappy but thriving, and the combined daily circulation of the two newspapers was well above 1 million.” The promotion to columnist, he says, “was enough to make more than a little bit of a splash in Chicago media circles. … Somebody gets a column today, and the first question anyone would ask would be, ‘You mean like in a newspaper? Are they paying you?’”

USA Today has lost 100,000 subscribers from the slowdown in travel
When hotels suffer, USA Today suffers. Departing USA Today publisher Craig Moon discusses the circ woes with Russell Adams, who reports that Moon’s retirement was largely unexpected within Gannett. USAT founder Al Neuharth learned about it in a call Tuesday morning. “It would be unfair to say I expected that news,” he says. “But things happen. People retire.”

Gannett Consolidates Editing of Four New Jersey Dailies
Gannett Co. is consolidating copy editing and page production operations for four New Jersey newspapers. The Asbury Park Press will house the regional operation at its offices in Neptune. The other three papers are the Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, the Courier News of Somerville and the Daily Record of Parsippany… McLean, Va.-based Gannett publishes more daily newspapers than any other company. Its 85 papers include USA Today.

Judge lets Creative Loafing CEO keep his company
A federal judge has ruled in Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason’s favor, denying a major creditor’s request to take control of the company, which includes the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper.

SF Chronicle Gets Plenty Of Applications For Buyouts
The paper says it will now cut close to 150 jobs and they got almost that many people that want cut from the paper.

Tough First Quarter For Big Media
Stocks in the media and entertainment sector are continuing to have a tough time. Time Warner, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, CBS — all are seeing share declines in 2009. According to one analyst: “Essentially everything is going wrong at the same time.”

FORESTWEB Report: North American Newsprint Decline Accelerates (by Debra Garcia, Editor & Publisher)
Newsprint consumption by U.S. dailies fell 26.2% year-over-year in February, the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC) reported. Even more disturbing, however, is the even steeper decline reported for total U.S. demand.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Lays Down His Pen
He is the 82-year old giant of Latin American literature who pioneered the school of magical realism and inspired a generation of novelists. But Gabriel Garcia Marquez has barely written a word in five years, and fans are facing the prospect that he has finally laid down his pen for good.

A typical NYT Magazine cover story costs $40K-plus
NYT Mag editor Gerald Marzorati on what’s required of a writer doing a long-form magazine piece: “Weeks and weeks of reporting. Hanging out with the subject of your piece, hoping some scene will emerge that because of where it is and what the dialogue is, will reveal that subject. … And all this time, of course, costs money. A typical cover story in the Times Magazine, when you add up what we pay the author and what the expenses for travel are — and this leaves out the editing and fact-checking costs, the photography, and so on — the tally is north of $40,000, and often, if a war zone is involved, considerably more.”

Ask Seventeen a Question, Get Answer From Expert or Advertiser
Hearst Employs Answerology to Power New Online Feature

A Magazine With See-Through Appeal
Tar, the new Indie arts magazine, features transparency and tries to explore the intersection of art and fashion.

“The demand for our product is overwhelming,” says Plastic Logic veep
So far, the Financial Times, USA Today and digital publisher Zinio — which converts magazines from Cosmopolitan and InStyle to Mother Jones and The Economist into digital formats — have, among others, partnered with Plastic Logic, which is developing a mobile digital reader for newspapers and magazines. PL veep Daren Benzi tells Gillian Reagan that The company’s “secret sauce” is its flexible screen, which feels a bit like a magazine and makes the device nearly unbreakable.

Streaming is still a “mandate.”
Despite a high profile Philadelphia station’s decision to pull its webcast, Peak Broadcasting’s Bill Figenshu says there’s been no “groundswell” of webcasts going off the air. Greater Media CEO Peter Smyth calls streaming a “mandate” and thinks stations need to be where listeners are.

Milestone: HD Radio hits one million.
Three years after the first HD Radio receivers arrived, iBiquity says it’s crossed the one million mark. VP Joe D’Angelo says sales should grow more rapidly as HD Radio chipsets have been shrunk to fit into MP3 players and other portable devices. An iPod accessory is set to be released this summer.

College life: Porn movie is a big hit on college campuses
["Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge?"] – reportedly the most expensive porn film ever made – combines computer-generated images with hardcore sex scenes. Digital Playground’s 2005 film “Pirates” became a surprise hit on campuses from Yale to Tulane, said spokesman Christopher Ruth. Student groups contacted Digital Playground for permission to show that movie, he said. From that experience, Ruth said the idea arose to market the 2008 sequel to university audiences by offering it free. The marketing strategy is unique to Digital Playground, he said. Student groups at a half-dozen universities — including UCLA and Carnegie Mellon University — accepted the offer. Hundreds of students lined up at each show… [T]he larger point is to get young people accustomed to seeing adult movies as mainstream entertainment.
Gone are the battles of yesteryear.

X-Men pic “Wolverine” leaks online
“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” made an unauthorized debut online Tuesday, even though the film isn’t set for U.S. release until May 1.

Cable News Stokes Political Fever
Gorged on ratings from a historic election and still riding on leftover adrenaline, the cable networks have steadfastly remained in campaign mode.

Messages With a Mission, Embedded in TV Shows
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is set to spend more money on influencing popular culture through a deal with Viacom.
Does Bill Gates read MakeThemAccountable?

TV Guide Channel to Ditch the Scroll
Revamp Includes Original Programming for TV Fans

‘Project Runway’ to Live on Lifetime
NBC Universal, Weinstein Co. Finally Find a Way to Make It Work
At last!  Season 6 will be aired this summer.

Virtual Leagues Fold, Forcing Gamers to Find Actual Jobs
Professional gaming, which appeared to be a way for video game fanatics to make a living on their Xbox 360 consoles, has taken a big hit and now only one league survives.

Games for toddlers? Readers say yes — mostly
I want to play video games with my kid … and it turns out, you want to play video games with your kids too. The vast majority of readers who wrote in response to my column last week feel comfortable letting their youngest children play games.

Pandora Adds Song Lyrics (Mashable)
Hot on the heels of the dust-up surrounding Last.fm’s decision to charge International users and kill off third party mobile apps, Pandora’s announcing a welcome and positive change that Last.fm’s had for a few months - song lyrics. According to their post on the matter, Pandora has been quietly integrating fully licensed lyrics into the site with the help of their lyrics partner, Gracenote, for about a week. Pandora’s also tweaked the interface to add more song variety options, introduced station gifting (think mixtapes you can color-up and exchange with friends), and now supports bulk purchases.

The New Most-Searched Term On The Web? Craigslist (Paid Content)
Hard-hit consumers looking to raise quick cash by selling their belongings are driving big increases in traffic to classified-ad sites, according to Hitwise. The firm reports that traffic to the sites jumped 84 percent in February, compared to a year ago. Most of the new traffic is going to Craigslist, which even in the face of competition from classified-ad networks, like Oodle, continues to boost its market share. One reason Craigslist is benefiting disproportionately: Hitwise says that it has made inroads among lower-income people.

Microsoft To Spend Up To $100 Million On Advertising For Search Relaunch (Paid Content)
In recent weeks, Microsoft has admitted very publicly that it has bungled the marketing around its Live Search search engine. The company now plans to spend up to $100 million to fix its image in the market, according to a report in AdAge. Microsoft has hired ad agency JWT to run an online, TV, print and radio campaign that will coincide with a Spring relaunch of Live Search that is expected to introduce new features to the search engine as well as possibly a new brand name, Kumo.

@ Cable Show: Comcast’s Roberts: Online Video ‘ Friend, Not Foe’—And Revenue (Paid Content)
Most of the discussion swirling about making paid programming ubiquitous across platforms calls for no additional charges for the consumer. Pay for it once and you get it on TV, broadband or mobile. Most of the payoff for operators would come in lower churn, new subscribers and increased interest in broadband. But that doesn’t mean everything a cable subscriber gets online or on mobile would be free; that’s not the case now when subscribers order pay-per-view movies… The best comparison to what Comcast might do with On Demand Online is what it already does with video on demand: standard content is included and subscribers of premium services.

Discovery Engine Coming to Twitter Homepage. Wait, What Twitter Homepage? (by Stan Schroeder at Mashable)
The folks at Twitter are experimenting (on a small set of users) with a new search box that will be added to the sidebar and display search results directly on the homepage. They call it the “discovery engine,” although it seems like a redesign and a relatively slight change in functionality. I visited my Twitter page to see if the feature is enabled for me, and it’s not. And then it struck me: I never actually go to the Twitter homepage, and thus I don’t really care what happens there; all I care about is what third party developers can do with the API.

The thing is, I find Twhirl vastly better than the actual Twitter homepage. There are other fantastic Twitter clients, also: Tweetdeck and Alertthingy are good examples as well, and there are many others. And guess what: they all have search already.

Forecast: Slower online growth.
After digesting the Internet Advertising Bureau’s final tally on last year’s revenue growth, eMarketer forecasters are cutting this year’s projections. They expect the digital sector to eek out a 4.5% increase in ad revenues, about half what they forecast earlier.

Online May Actually Benefit From Detroit’s Meltdown (Paid Content)
Some media stocks dropped earlier this week partly on fears that sales of auto ads could plunge even more with the Obama administration’s rescue plan for the automobile industry. But a Nielsen report this morning shows that online media companies have less to fear: Even as auto companies slashed their overall ad budgets in the second half of 2008, their online spending dipped only 0.5 percent (By comparison, print spending dropped 40 percent). So far this year, Nielsen says that auto-ad spending online is “once again gaining momentum and is forecast to be on par with Q107, while still slightly below Q108.”

Avon Finds Magazines Work for Young-Skewing Brand
Study Finds People More Likely to Pay Attention to Print Ads

Slow Those Fast-Forwarders, Study Says, With Emotion
The study, covering 55 national ads, found that TV viewers are 25 percent more likely to fast-forward through commercials with what was deemed low emotional engagement than spots with what was considered high emotional engagement. Commercials that make an emotional connection with viewers are more likely to be viewed in their entirety, according to the study, even in the time-shifted environment of DVR watching. So the study suggests that commercials try from the very first seconds to connect emotionally with viewers.

Actors in Tentative Deal
Two major actors’ unions reached a tentative three-year deal on contracts for commercials with advertising industry groups on Wednesday.

Google Settles AdWords Lawsuit For $20 Million (Paid Content)
[S]ettling its latest AdWords-related lawsuit could ultimately cost Google up to $20 million, according to Mediapost. The class-action lawsuit was filed by two small business advertisers in 2005: Minnesota-based printing company CLRB Hanson Industries and N.J.-based Howard Stern (not the radio personality); they argued that Google had charged them more for ads on certain days than they’d agreed to pay for. Google countered that it had only overcharged them to make up for days when it under-delivered ads, but still chose to end the litigation with a settlement. Both plaintiffs will receive $20,000; Google agreed to pay their lawyers more than $5 million. Other affected advertisers will get AdWords credits.

In a statement to Mediapost, a company spokesperson said: “Google believes the claims are without merit, but we are pleased to have the litigation behind us and to move forward with our business objectives.”

BlackBerry maker joins the fray with app store
Research in Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry phones, launched its awaited one-stop shop for add-on applications on Wednesday.

Light and Cheap, Netbooks Are Poised to Reshape PC Industry
The personal computer world may be headed for an upheaval as thin and cheap netbooks offer the portability of a cellphone and the power of a PC.

Verizon Wireless sees Kindle-type e-readers coming
Amazon’s Kindle might soon be getting new competitors in the market for electronic-book devices.
Who’s working on the all-in-one—PC, reader, phone, media player, etc. etc. etc.?

Two Words For Startups Looking For An Exit: Good Luck (Paid Content)
For the second straight quarter, there wasn’t a single venture-backed IPO in Q109, and merger-and-acquisition activity was down sharply, according to a quarterly report from the National Venture Capital Association.