Monday, August 3, 2009
'Cash for Clunkers' Language Giving Feds Authority to Take Control of Computers
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Glenn Beck exposed some disturbing language from the Obama administration's "Cash for Clunker" program Web site Cars.gov.
Once the Web operator proceeds beyond that point in the dealers section - the government has some very frightening language about what authority they have over your computer posted, as Beck reported. Ordinary consumers wouldn't encounter this warning, but the information contained in the dealer's computers might include theirs.
"A warning box comes up, and it says, ‘This application provides to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a federal computer system and it is property of the United States government,'" Beck read. "‘Any and all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.'"
Kimberly Guilfoyle, a legal analyst for Fox News interpreted the language to mean the government has very broad authority over your computer - including the ability to seize personal and private information.
"Could it be any more broad or frightening?" Guilfoyle said. "Here you are trying to be a good citizen and make a charitable contribution, do something that's good and guess what - they are jumping right inside you, seizing all of your personal and private information" ... "Once they've tapped into your system, and the government of course has like malware systems and tracking cookies - they can tap in any time they want. They can continue to track you basically forever,"
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Cash for Clunkers Video Sparks Outrage Over Wasteful Government Programs
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Few things have illustrated government waste as effectively as this disturbing YouTube video in which a well running Volvo engine was destroyed as part of the Cash for Clunkers program.
This video is currently going viral on the Web and has sparked outraged comments from many people whom I suspect have previously remained somewhat uninterested in the often elusive topic of economics. However, the wasteful destruction of this car seems to have awakened an economic sense of revulsion to an extent rarely seen before.
[Fellow gear-heads will find this surprisingly painful to watch
{they'll also find it flattering to Volvo: tough car.}]
{they'll also find it flattering to Volvo: tough car.}]
Here is a sampling of their YouTube comments which are in sharp contrast to the glowing praise of the Cash for Clunkers program prevalent in the MSM:
The stupid Logic that spends BILLIONS on destroying usable cars will take cause the prices for decent used cars to skyrocket by removing hundreds of thousands from the market. All to please some environmental nutcases who believe The Little People should drive around in tiny little clown cars!
What a waste. I know lots of college kids, young professionals and even high school kids that need dependable cars. I cannot believe my tax dollars is funding this program. Destroying cars some poor person could be using to get to work.
The instigators of this whole program should be up on a human rights abuse charge, not to mention polluting the environment when destroying the cars. Hell this car should've been donated or sold or given to a church or help a needy family! You people are sick.
Probably no vehicle as yet since the Cash for Clunkers program ran out of money and the government computers handling these transactions have seized up worse than that Volvo engine. Back to the comments, many of which are from foreigners who can't believe how stupid Americans have become in the Age of Obama:
Damn it, I would've been ECSTATIC to own that car! Got a 93 Crown Vic right now with one of those damned AODE transmissions. I'd love to work out a deal with a dealership so I could trade my TRUE clunker in for one of these perfectly good cars, 80% of which are being sold to China of all places for the steel. What will this do to the used car market? How will students to buy a cheap cap?That Volvo is worth at least 9-12 thousand dollars. Insanity!
Stupid americans deserve to be bankrupt.
There are many more such comments on this video at YouTube and growing since this viral video has struck a chord in a way that abstract economic arguments have not.
Ironically [predictably?], the dealer who destroyed that Volvo probably has received no cash yet since the Cash for Clunkers program has run out of money and the government computers for handling these transactions are all down.
And the MSM is calling this program a popular success.
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Clunker Law is a lemon
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Good luck figuring out how to navigate your way through the hoops the government has imposed on Americans who hope to benefit from the cash-for-clunkers act. Michelle Singletary explains in the Washington Post. She also acknowledges,"in truth, this is welfare for the limping auto industry."
Beyond that, two relatives of mine have been laid off by Enterprise Rent-A-Car. They worked in the area responsible for selling cars used in the rental operations to people who want to buy them.
The company decided that they did not want to run the risk of keeping these workers when some of the car purchasing public migrates to buying government-subsidized new cars...
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House passes bill to extend 'cash for clunkers'
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The House approved a bill Friday to provide an additional $2 billion to continue the federal government's week-old "cash for clunkers" program.
Even if Congress approves the $2 billion extension on the program, dealers say the money will only last a week.
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Soldier Turned Journalist Finds Contempt for Military Among Classmates, Teachers
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In May 2007, Matt Mabe was a junior Army officer who had done two tours of duty in Iraq and was leaving the service for good to pursue a career in journalism -- or so he thought.
Columbia was a fresh start. No uniforms, no one to salute. At first, I relished being among students from different walks of life: lawyers and businesspeople, teachers and activists, creative people with strong convictions and a range of views on every issue. Few of them, however, had any experience with the military. Most, it seemed, had never met a veteran.
Some of their notions about military culture and the conduct of the war typified the simplistic views prevalent in the mainstream media. For example, there was a perception that military service was merely a last resort for poor kids or immigrants; all veterans, some people assumed, suffered some degree of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It signaled to me that the cultural rift between the institution I had left and the one I was joining was more hardwired than I had realized, and I increasingly found myself defending the military against stereotypes.
As the semester progressed, I felt a creeping sense of isolation. I had my own criticisms about the failed strategy that plunged Iraq into chaos, but I was resentful of the hostility from prominent panelists and lecturers at the school that year. One evening, an award-winning photographer presented work he'd done in Iraq to my war correspondence class. During his talk, he ridiculed the hapless officers and scheming NCOs he'd dealt with on his various embeds, caricaturing them with tired labels and silly voices. He even delivered a mocking impersonation of one dim-witted private assigned to protect him.
These were extreme views, yet as some of my classmates laughed that evening, images of the soldiers my unit had lost swirled in my head. Brave men who had died serving a cause they believed in didn't deserve such desecration, I thought. I sought advice from a professor about how to manage the raw emotions these interactions provoked. Her response, as she later wrote in my performance evaluation, was hardly encouraging:
"I would advise that Matt refrain from working in Iraq until he feels comfortable maintaining an emotional distance from his old life, so as not to impair his journalistic judgment."
Mabe's tale ends on a bitter twist, with the soldier-turned-journalist involuntarily turning soldier again, being called up as a reservist for a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
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A Paktika Province Fourth of July
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My friend Matt Holzmann has published a beautiful tribute to two young Americans killed there on the Fourth of July while we, safe at home, were celebrating our independence.
... On the 4th of July, the AP reported that the Taliban had launched a coordinated attack first with a suicide truck bomber to try and blow the gates (which failed), and then with coordinated mortar, machine gun, and RPG fire, raking a quiet FOB Zerok. Over 200 Talibi hit pretty much at once from 2 sides with everything they had...
... Our soldiers devastated the enemy. Dozens were killed, and the bloodstains leading back across the border to the safe haven for the Taliban were many. These were murderous thugs trying to impose the worst sort of degradation on their own people, and their sole goal was to take as many American scalps as possible on our most sacred civic holiday...
...These young men knew their duty and did it in the face of death to protect all Americans. As we had our barbecues and picnics and parades these kids died for our freedoms to say and think and do as we pretty well please. We don’t see this in the suburbs and cities. Death is distant, hermetically sealed off. It’s in the small towns that we see the price of war more clearly...
We must respect the sacrifice of these young men and so many others who have paid that price and demand more of ourselves in return. It’s called keeping the faith. May God rest their souls and comfort their loved ones and buddies back in Afghanistan.
[Highly Recommended > ]
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Muslims call to prosecute Queen
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FANATICS led by a sponging Islamic extremist enraged MPs yesterday by publicly demanding the Queen is prosecuted - for GENOCIDE. Rabble-rouser Anjem Choudary's cohorts accused British troops of wiping out the civilian population in Afghanistan and said it was Her Majesty's fault because she is "the head of this country".
In an internet rant to fellow extremist Muslims, they declare:
"She is the one who applauds her sons and daughters to go out and massacre hundreds and thousands of innocent people. Shouldn't she be tried for genocide and the extermination of a nation?"
MP Patrick Mercer - chairman of the Commons counter- terrorism sub-committee - and ex-soldier remarked: "We must recognise Mr Choudary's words for what they are - weapons being wielded by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This is the next phase of an enemy operation in our country."
Cops are currently investigating Choudary, 42 - who is on benefits and is a pal of hate preacher Omar Bakri - for demanding gays be stoned to death. Douglas Murray, of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said:"It's especially offensive because the people behind it are living off handouts from the British taxpayer."
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Venezuela Still Aids Rebels in Colombia, New Material Shows
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Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.
The materials point to detailed collaborations as recently as weeks ago...
FLASHBACKs >
Yes, Hugo Cheated
Hugo’s Hezbollah
Court Freezes $12 billion in Venezuela assets
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Rubin on Eric Holder's Justice Department
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Jennifer Rubin writes at the Weekly Standard how badly Eric Holder's Justice Department has politicized the law:
It is therefore surprising that in the first seven months of the Obama administration, a series of hyper-partisan decisions, questionable appointments, and the inexplicable dismissal of a high-profile voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther party have once again fanned suspicions that the Justice Department is a pawn in partisan political battles.
Both in Congress and among a number of current and former Justice Department employees is a growing concern that the Obama administration is politicizing the department in ways the Bush team never imagined. A former Justice employee cautions that every administration has the right and the obligation to set policy.
"Elections have consequences,"
he affirms. But he thinks that the Obama administration has gone beyond policy reversals and is interfering with prosecutorial decisions, staffing the department with unqualified personnel, and invoking privilege to thwart proper congressional oversight and public scrutiny...
Holder, who did Clinton's dirty work for him in the pardon fiasco, is quite familiar with these partisan brawls and there is little doubt that this is the reason Obama chose him in the first place. Holder sure didn't waste any time, did he?
Read Jennifer's entire piece.
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Holder Approves of Bookstore and Library Searches... Where's Outrage?
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Since 2002 the debate has raged about the efficacy and Constitutionality of the Patriot Act with the power of the FBI to search bookstore and library records coming in for special condemnation. Even as the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the law, right to privacy groups, the media and anti-Bushies have pointed to this particular policy and cried Orwell or worse.
But, now that it's Obama's AG announcing he agrees that the FBI should have this power, all anti-Bush administration voices are silent on the matter that had them so exercised for 6 years...
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CALIFORNIA SCREAMING
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During the last two decades, California has been transformed from the nation's most anti-labor outpost to a state essentially run by public-sector unions.
Nearly three in five public sector workers are unionized. The Democratic Party, which is fully owned by unions, has controlled the legislature and most statewide posts for more than decade. That means more government workers, higher salaries and drastically higher pension costs.
- According to Adam Summers, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, the state's annual pension fund contribution vaulted from $321 million in 2000-2001 to $7.3 billion last year.
- According to public databases, more than 5,000 people are drawing pensions in excess of $100,000 from the state of California each year. [many while working other jobs]
Just before the May 19 special election to plug the state's $24 billion budget deficit, a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board asked Service Employees International Union chief Andy Stern to respond to charges that unions are the 21st-century equivalent of the railroads that were once all-powerful in California.
Stern verbally shrugged: "I think democracy is an ugly thing at times."
That ugliness has made the California budget, like those in most of the other 49 states, less efficient and more bloated. Government spending, unlike spending in the private economy, is a zero-sum game -- especially on the state level, since governors can't print money. Every dollar spent gilding a pension is a dollar not spent funding an orphanage.
[Labor unions must be banned in public entities - they've none of the 'leveling' forces that keep them in check in the private sector.]
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Texas proves limited government works
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Austin, Texas, and Washington are a little more than 1,500 miles apart, but the differences in governing philosophy could be measured in light years.
For example, our just-concluded legislative session yielded a balanced state budget, tax relief for 40,000 small businesses, and it left $9 billion unspent for future state needs.
States that have overspent, overtaxed and overregulated have seen greater deficits, job losses and even population loss... [snip]
When Washington's power to tax, regulate, mandate and meddle is restrained, American families are free to enjoy the liberty upon which our nation was founded. Limited government works.
[How many times must it prove true before acknowledged?]
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Year Ago GDP Jump 'Disappointing'; This Year Negative GDP: 'Whole Lot Brighter,'
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A year ago, when the government reported second quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doubled from the first quarter to 1.9 percent, the CBS Evening News centered a story around what Katie Couric described as “disappointing” news while ABC and NBC didn't utter a syllable about the GDP jump...
But Friday night, with a different President in office, Couric crowed a one percent decline in the 2009 second quarter GDP -- the first time since tracking began in 1947 that the economy has contracted for four straight quarters -- means the “glimmer of hope just got a whole lot brighter” . ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas saw “new optimism about an economic recovery” and declared of the new negative number: “That's actually good” ... [snip]
George Stephanopoulos shared the White House's joy, the gullible ex-Democratic operative maintained “they can point to these numbers today and say, look, there is real evidence right now that the stimulus package that we pushed for so hard is working. They cited economists who said it made a three percent difference in these numbers.”
[despite only 2% of the stimulus being spent so far???
A: they think we're stupid.]
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Same Inaccurate Claim on Oil Imports
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In a July 6 interview with Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, President Obama repeated his false claim that the U.S. “import[s] more oil today than ever before.” When Obama first said this in February during an address to a joint-session of Congress, we wrote that the president had gotten his facts wrong. We said then that oil imports peaked in 2005 and have “substantially” declined since.
That’s still the case. This chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, updated from our February post, shows that weekly imports of crude oil and petroleum products have continued to decline. According to the chart, oil imports peaked in November 2005, with 15,217,000 imported barrels per day. The most recent data, from the week of June 26, 2009, shows 11,883,000 imported barrels per day.
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DEVELOPING SHALE OIL MAY SOLVE OUR ENERGY 'CRISIS'
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The United States imports about 66 percent of its oil; yet, Congress has done little to remedy the situation. Instead, it has erected barriers to domestic energy production.
Fortunately, the United States has vast quantities of oil in rocks, including oil shale, which can be converted into fuel. In fact, we have 75 percent of the world's oil shale.
Unfortunately, due to radical environmentalists' sway over key Democratic lawmakers, this oil is off-limits, despite:
- Per acre, oil shale is significantly more concentrated than the oil and gas on Alaska's North Slope, Alberta's tar sand or ethanol production.
- Indeed, some shale contains more than one million barrels of oil per acre.
- By contrast, conventional oil fields yield about 10,000 barrels per acre, and Congress's preferred alternative to oil, ethanol from corn yields, contains the equivalent of 10 barrels per acre.
- The RAND Corporation estimates that a three million bbl/day industry could generate $20 billion in annual profits while reducing prices for consumers.
- In addition, oil shale development and production would create as many as 100,000 direct and indirect new jobs during the operation of just a two million bbl/day shale oil industry.
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Debunking myths about our 'lousy' health care system
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Surprise! Who's more satisfied with their health care system; Us, or the Canadians?
The Hoover Institute's Scott Atlas has a list of 10 reasons why our health care system is better than in other countries. The figures for cancer survivability are astonishing:1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway and 184 percent higher in Canada.
We also do better with treating chronic disease as well as giving more citizens wider access to preventive care, like screenings for some cancers.
Then there's the familiar fact that we spend less time waiting for health care services than elsewhere as well as being generally more satisfied with our own health care:
6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom.
7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand , and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."
All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
Finally, innovation in medicine begins and ends with America:
10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.
The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.
There is no reason for massive reform of a system that delivers such miracles.
The problems with covering the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions can be dealt with and not destroy what most people seem satisfied with.
There really is no comparison - the American health care system is the best, the most modern, and the most efficient in the world.
[No, it's "horribly broken". Don't any of the survey respondents watch TV??]
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CNBC Goes into 'Crisis' Mode at Height of ObamaCare Debate
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Balanced?
Invoking the word "crisis" might conjure up images of a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on the U.S. Gulf Coast or some other situation where decisive action much be taken to avert impending doom. But, is it appropriate to suddenly attach it to the key issue put forth by Obama administration, such as health care?
On July 30, CNBC dedicated its three-hour morning show "Squawk Box" to the issue and labeled the special coverage: "America's Healthcare Crisis." CNBC used the word "crisis" despite polls (including a July 30 Time article) that found 80 percent of the respondents satisfied with their health care...
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Obama campaign style unchanged as president
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It seems like Barack Obama has time-traveled back to last summer when he was simply a Democrat running for the White House. Only now, he's the president facing a more complicated objective and opponent as he campaigns to 'overhaul' the nation's health care system.
Yet, there he was last Wednesday, jetting to this Virginia town to talk to supermarket workers from a platform between the bakery and deli. Earlier, he bounded onto a flag-draped stage at a North Carolina high school to cheers from an adoring throng of two thousand. At both sites, he made remarks, took questions and shook hands with fans.
He also recently appeared at an interest group forum, AARP, toured the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and lent his starpower to Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey at political events — typical stops when he was the Democratic nominee.
Obama's pitch has been the same everywhere: Congress must quickly pass health care legislation... [snip]
At each stop, Obama is his usual wonky professor yet charming everyman self, clad in his usual dark suit and tie, fielding the usual offbeat questions with ease and playing by his usual rules:"I'm just going to call on people as they raise their hand. I'll go girl, boy, girl, boy so that people don't think I'm biased."
Just like his 2008 campaign — but not...
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Disaster in the Making?
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After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust.
When that person is the President of the United States, the potential for disaster is virtually unlimited.
He is heading this country toward disaster on many fronts, including a nuclear Iran, which has every prospect of being an irretrievable disaster of almost unimaginable magnitude. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle-- and neither can generations yet unborn. They may yet curse us all for leaving them hostages to nuclear terror.
Nothing has torn more countries apart from inside like racial and ethnic polarization. Just this year, a decades-long civil war, filled with unspeakable atrocities, has finally ended in Sri Lanka. Politicians "solving" the "problem" of the Tamil minority being more economically successful than the Sinhalese majority. Group identity politics led to group preferences and quotas that escalated into polarization, mob violence and ultimately civil war.
Many people are rightly worried about what this administration's reckless spending will do to the economy in our time and to our children and grandchildren, to whom a staggering national debt will be passed on. But if the worst that Barack Obama does is ruin the economy, I will breathe a sigh of relief.
This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites-- and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.
And it is the American people who will pay the price.
[More, Recommended > ]
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Our Professional Media and Rumors
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As you've probably heard by now that a couple of Alaska liberal bloggers "broke" the story about Sarah Palin's supposed impending divorce from her husband.
It sure sounded solid coming from Alaska Report News:
AlaskaReport has learned today that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage (including a former Palin staffer) have confirmed the split.Very interesting. But not true, according to Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl who evidently talked directly to Palin or someone who was authorized to speak on her behalf:
A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska last week.
The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other for most of last Sunday's resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.
"Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I'm not blind!"
-- SARAH PALIN
Yes, that is her OFFICIAL reponse, which I got via phone at 5:35 this afternoon. Take that to the bank.
As someone who doesn't consider himself a professional ;^) journalist but who has been around newsrooms for many years, let me just say that if this had come across my desk, I would have smelled a set up. It's too pat, the pieces fit too nicely together (an "explanation" for why she resigned) not to raise alarms with real journalists.
Nevertheless, once both those sites hit the internet with the story, the blog feeding frenzy on the left began, with a couple of MSM outlets joining in...
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How Did This Happen?
THE 
published an especially embarrassing correction on July 22, fixing seven errors in a single article — an appraisal of Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman famed for his meticulous reporting. The newspaper had wrong dates for historic events; gave incorrect information about Cronkite’s work, his colleagues and his program’s ratings; misstated the name of a news agency, and misspelled the name of a satellite.
“Wow,” said Arthur Cooper, a reader from Manhattan. “How did this happen?”
The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not.
And, it could have been worse. Nicole Herrington, a late-shift editor reading the appraisal casually, decided to check a fact near the top — Cronkite’s age when he retired. It was wrong. He was 64, not 65. Virshup then headed off the same mistake in the Page 1 obituary...
[The 'funny' part? It's a NYT critique . Well, that aught to assure everything's fixed.]
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