Category Archives: Blogosphere

Bezos’s WaPo buy

All I can say is that the $250 million Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid is pretty cheap for such a famous brand, which illustrates just how far the newspaper biz has fallen since Monster and Craig’s, and the Web in general took away their classifieds for job, car, real estate ads, etc.

Will it change WaPo content from super-Liberal Democrat to something more conservative? Probably not, since Bezos is said to be a big Democrat contributor, possibly even to Obongo himself with whom he has lunched. Probably just a lot more of the same, though we might expect more private space industry coverage, with less snark about it. For a little while.

Most likely Bezos, who knows nothing about the news biz, just wanted a tax write-off to protect some of his wealth and the WaPo will disappear in a year or so. I hope this isn’t bad news for the one or two folks I know who used to work there and still get their pensions from it, but it looks like it is. I’m going to file this under Obituaries because I’d bet that’s where it’s headed.

UPDATE:  Breitbart News reports the WaPo had lost 87 percent of its value in the past ten years. Not terribly surprising, given:

“Over the years, the fake fact checks, the apparent coordinating with the Obama campaign to destroy Romney, the phony smears leveled at Republicans, the non-stop pushing of leftist causes, the unforgivable stealth-corrections, the laughably biased polls…”

Maybe Bezos can use it as a straight press release factory for the White House.

Did White House get editor fired?

Yes. Next question.

Wormtongue likes to compare himself to some of his predecessors. FDR and Lincoln come to mind. LBJ, not so much. But Johnson was wellknown for complaining about negative reporting, including headlines like the one in the Chattanooga Times [Not-So] Free Press. He was used to a lapdog newspaper in Austin doing his bidding.

The Worm apparently is known for calling to get sentences removed. So it just makes sense that he got editorial page editor Drew Johnson fired.

He wouldn’t even have to ask for it. A hard stare would be plenty, from this would-be dictator who (like his fellow Democrats LBJ and FDR) has used the IRS to attack his political critics.

The only way to avoid it is to become his stenographer, like, who else, the toadies at the NYTimes.

Via Instapundit

UPDATE:  Remember, this is the guy who joked (in public in 2009) about having the IRS audit his enemies.

Texas roadside cavity searches for suspected marijuana

THIS HAS BEEN UPDATED BELOW

Pretty incredible stuff, the videos here at the Advice Goddess. Apparently not a lone wolf operation but the latest escalation in the war on drugs. Because, otherwise…

“So how did Texas troopers hundreds of miles apart get captured on dash cams conducting body cavity searches under nearly identical conditions? ‘The fact that they both happened means there is some sort of (department) policy’ advocating their use at traffic stops, Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project told the [New York] Daily News. ‘It’s such a prohibited practice. I don’t know why they think they can do this. It’s mind-boggling.'”

Harrington is an old Lefty ambulance chaser who’s never been shy about exaggerating the facts for political/publicity purposes, but he doesn’t seem to be twisting anything here, thanks to the videos. The searches occurred by the roadside after traffic stops. Apparently no warrants involved. Certainly no legal representation.

So far, one trooper has been suspended, but three more also are involved, in Dallas and Brazoria counties [Actually, there’s more, see my UPDATE below]. And there are at least two lawsuits from these cases now going against the Department of Public Safety, so maybe the rest of us won’t have worry about this every time a trooper decides he smells marijuana.

Can’t speak for the truth of the NYC paper’s report, of course. There’s an old tradition in the news biz that the farther away from the newsroom the story occurs, the looser with the facts the reporter and editors can and tend to be. Especially the Yankee press beating up on Texas and other Southern states.

Via The Advice Goddess

UPDATE:  This, it turns out, is old news, indeed. Not just because both incidents happened  last summer, but because in May a Dallas County grand jury indicted the two  troopers involved there for sexual assault and “official oppression” (interesting name for a law).  One was fired and the other is on suspension. The DPS also paid $185,000 in settlement of a civil lawsuit.

In the Brazoria County incident, one trooper was fired and the other is on suspension and DPS is admitting official embarrassment: “The department does not and will not tolerate any conduct that violates the U.S. and Texas constitutions, or DPS training or policy,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw.

The Texas Rangers have investigated and recommended grand jury review and Brazoria County prosecutors are considering it. Their action may be delayed because the case seems to involve the elected county sheriff, Charles Wagner, and one of his deputies, Aaron Kindred. There’s also a pending civil lawsuit, which also includes Wagner and Kindred as defendants.

So the DPS, the Rangers, at least one grand jury and prosecutors are on the case. It’s rogue behavior and not official policy. I’m relieved.

Pity Huma? Ha, laugh at her

“Here she is, a proud warrioress of Islam, devoted to spreading the True Faith by any means necessary amongst the loathsome kaffirs who dwell in benighted darkness in the Dar al-Harb with their loose women and their thirty minute pizza delivery and their flush toilets, and she is stuck with this idiot Jew who can’t stop showing off his tallywhacker to any woman who wants to take a look at it.”

Via Akaky at The Passing Parade

Obama’s new threat: worsening race relations

I remember the race riots of the 60s. Ninety-nine percent black, they were, mostly post-assassination of Dr. King. My Army cavalry unit trained in 68 to put one down in Baltimore if one developed there, with tear gas and a show of gleaming bayonets. Luckily for us, it never happened.

Now the great divider is saying that if he doesn’t get his way with Congress on taxes and a new spending package race relations “may get worse” cause black folks will be incensed at not getting their share of the pie. Ah, yes, the “pie” concept of economics, so beloved of Democrats. And this clown went to Harvard?

How could race relations get any worse? Wormtongue and his court media have been stirring them up since Zimmerman blew up stupid Trayvon’s punk ass.

But there’s more tragedy afoot here.  So what if blacks repeat the 60s and burn down their own neighborhoods? When the looting starts, the Korean and Pakistani business owners will shoot back. And the rioters likewise won’t get far into any nearby non-black neighborhood before coming under heavy kinetics.

The so-what is that, as usual, the Latrinas and the Kemontas will be the primary victims. And their president couldn’t care less. They are his tools, and no more.

Via Instapundit.

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Wisdom from Dr. Boli

Monica micromanages the Groper’s next blowjob

That’s Althouse’s headline, with my own slight alteration, re the newly surfaced audiotape about Slick Willie’s “I did not have sex with that woman” lie of the late 90s. Too rich.

“Since I know you will be alone tomorrow evening, I have two proposals for you, neither of which is you not seeing me… Now the first thing that has to happen is that you need to pre-plan with Betty…”

“Betty Currie was [the Willie’s] secretary.”

I hope this recording is just the first of many such reminders of how sleazy the Clintons really are. Slick Willie for being a groper of women (War on Women, anyone?), even then-young Monica who was his daughter’s age, and Lady Macbeth for being so power mad she’d stay a cuckhold rather than surrender her access to the throne. Heh.

And why we could do without the former secretary of state who left an ambassador to die in Benghazi as Wormtongue’s White House successor.

Via Althouse.